netherlands league

 

France holds emergency meeting over Champions League fiasco

The sports minister blames Liverpool fans for the chaos that marred the Champions League final, but seeks to learn lessons.

Liverpool fans after the Champions League final football match between Liverpool and Real Madrid at a fan park in Paris, France, May 28, 2022

 

France’s sports ministry has convened an emergency meeting of security and football officials, following the chaos that marred the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.

Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera, speaking before the meeting on Monday, placed responsibility on Liverpool for the mayhem on Saturday. He also acknowledged that lessons had to be learned as Paris prepares for the 2024 Olympics.

The French government has faced a barrage of criticism from the press and politicians in the United Kingdom over police handling of the match, which saw thousands of Liverpool fans with tickets struggling to enter.

Leading French daily Le Monde echoed the British complaints on Monday, saying the French authorities were “in denial” about their shortcomings that had turned Saturday’s event into a “fiasco”.

The scenes tarnished the image of the French capital, raising questions about its ability to host major sporting events as it gears up for the 2024 sporting showpiece, as well as the 2023 Rugby World Cup.

Monday’s meeting at the sports ministry involved the European football governing body UEFA, French football chiefs and the French police.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and Paris police chief Didier Lallement were also in attendance, along with the sports minister.

 Police used tear gas after dozens of people attempted to climb over barriers, according to the AFP news agency. Security staff had to round up about 20 fans who had scaled the fence and got into the ground.

Lallement has called for a formal investigation into the production of fake tickets, which he said had helped cause the problems.

The chaos inevitably brought back painful memories for Liverpool, a club haunted by the 1989 Hillsborough disaster which cost the lives of 97 people in a stadium crush.

Labour MP for Liverpool area Ian Byrne, who was present in Paris, told Sky News broadcaster that the fans had been treated “like animals”.

“It was horrific – there’s no other words to describe it. It was absolutely horrific and as someone who was at Hillsborough in 1989, it brought so many terrible memories flooding back,” he said.

The mayor of Liverpool, Joanne Anderson, who was also at the scene, told the BBC that it was “absolutely shambolic but also the police behaviour was also really brutal”.

The match was delayed by 36 minutes, almost unprecedented for an occasion of this magnitude and a huge embarrassment for the authorities.

Oudea-Castera told RTL radio that Liverpool, in contrast to Real Madrid, had failed to properly organise the supporters who came to Paris.

“Liverpool left its supporters on the loose, this is a major difference,” she said.

The minister added that there had been 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool fans with fake tickets or without tickets outside the Stade de France stadium just north of the capital.

“We need to see where these fake tickets came from … and how they were produced in such large numbers,” she said.

 

netherlands

 

Dutch government ends funding to Palestinian civil society group

Move comes despite external investigation finding no evidence of Israeli ‘terror’ claims made against Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

Palestinian workers harvest dates in the Jordan Valley village of Jiftlik in the Israeli-occupied West Bank 

Ramallah, occupied West Bank – The Dutch government has said it will no longer fund one of the six major civil society and human rights organisations in Palestine which Israel banned as “terrorist groups” in October 2021.

In a statement denouncing Wednesday’s decision, the Ramallah-based Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) – for which the Dutch government has been the lead donor since 2013 – said “this is the first time a government ends its funding for Palestinian civil society based on political conditionality”.

The UAWC provides hands-on aid to Palestinians, including by rehabilitating land at risk of confiscation by Israel. It helps tens of thousands of farmers in Area C – the more than 60 percent of the occupied West Bank under direct Israeli military control, and where most illegal Israeli settlements and their infrastructure are located.

The group said it would consider legal steps to challenge the Dutch government’s “harmful and unfair decision”, which, it warned, was “likely to resonate far beyond our organisation”.

In October 2021, Israel banned six organisations as “terrorist groups” under the pretext that they are affiliated with the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The move was widely condemned by the international community and rights groups as “unjustified” and “baseless” as the Israeli government has provided no evidence (PDF) to substantiate its claims.

Israel’s designation tied the six organisations to the armed wing of the PFLP, which was active as an organised body in the second Intifada (2000-2005) when it carried out attacks against Israeli civilian and military targets.

Five of the organisations are Palestinian: the Addameer prisoners’ rights group; Al-Haq rights group; the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC); the Bisan Center for Research and Development; and the UAWC. The sixth is the Palestine chapter of the Geneva-based Defence for Children International organisation.