Racist insults force minibasket match suspension in Tenerife

Parents of 11-year-old pupils at the Luther King elite school in Tenerife launched a verbal attack on one of the referees officiating a minibasket first division match between Cajasiete Fundación CB Canarias and LK Arafo on 18 April in La Laguna.

“We’ll find you from the boat you came in on,” reads the match report filed by the main referee after the encounter. All of this occurred, according to the report, at 04:43 in the fourth quarter, when a player from Luther King Arafo was disqualified after elbowing an opponent in the face.

Match suspended for 25 minutes

“Immediately after the disqualifying foul,” the report states, “a group of spectators identified as supporters of the visiting team approached the assistant referee and directed the following words at him: ‘We’ll find you from the boat you came in on.'” Following these shouts, the referees decided to suspend the match until those who had uttered the insults left the court.

The match was interrupted for 25 minutes – the time it took for the parents and family members of those children from Luther King school to leave the premises. The insulted referee is of Cuban origin and did not arrive in the Canary Islands by small fishing boat.

No sanctions or apologies 13 days on

Despite the racist abuse, the Competition Committee of the Tenerife Island Basketball Federation, chaired by Tenerife lawyer José Antonio Negrín Hernández, has not issued any sanction 13 days after the incident. Nor are there any recorded apologies from the LK Arafo club.

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Racist insults force minibasket match suspension in Tenerife