‘For black players, being on Instagram isn’t fun’: Wilfried Zaha pledges to continue speaking out about racist abuse online and demands action from social media companies
- Wilfried Zaha has been racially abused on multiple occasions on social media
- This month a 12-year-old was arrested for sending him a string of vile messages
- Zaha said: ‘‘It’s sad, really, because how is a 12-year-old even thinking like that?’
Wifried Zaha says he will continue to speak out about online racists and demand action from social media companies.
This month a 12-year-old was arrested for sending him a string of vile messages.
‘It’s sad, really, because how is a 12-year-old even thinking like that? Where is this hate coming from?’ he told CNN Sport.
Wilfried Zaha has pledged to continue calling on social media companies to take action against racist abuse sent from anonymous profiles online
‘For black players, being on Instagram isn’t fun.’ Zaha said it is time for social media sites to back up their pledges to clamp down on racism.
‘Anyone can talk a good game, but we need proof. Unless your actions match your words, it’s not enough.’
Zaha previously posted a video message online showing some of the abuse he’d received after the 12-year-old was arrested.
He said: ‘This is why I don’t tend to talk even though I get stupid racist messages every day of my life.
Zaha was the subject of more racist abuse online and shared the messages he’d received
‘But the other day I thought, “I’m going to out this person”, it happened to be a 12-year-old. How can you have such hatred at 12 and send those type of things?
‘It doesn’t make a difference to me how old he is. Anyway, social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, to make a change for people to not be able to do this stuff and be held accountable for the stuff they send, everyone should put their details in, their proper details, where you live, everything to be able to be able to come on an account so we don’t get these messages, look at these messages I’m still getting.
All kind and supportive stuff people have been saying but I want action, I want change.
‘Instagram, Twitter, unless people give their proper full details, they should not be allowed to make an account, because that’s all cowards do.
‘These stupid racist cowards, that’s all they do, hide behind accounts. And it is going to carry on, we can put it everywhere, we can put it on the news, wherever but it’s going to carry on.
‘So yeah until these things are changed, I don’t want to hear nothing sorry.’