UN refugee agency criticises Warsaw football fans’ banner

The representative of the UN’s refugee agency in Poland has criticised a controversial banner displayed by supporters of Legia Warsaw at a football match on Saturday. The club has also distanced itself from the actions of its fans and Warsaw city hall has called for action to be taken against them.

The large display sarcastically declared “Refugees Welcome” below an image of two men holding a baseball bat and a hammer alongside a crucifix-wearing woman with a pig’s head on a plate. During the match, Legia fans sung an anti-refugee chant.

Kevin J. Allen, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Poland, was asked about the banner by the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

“I believe everyone will agree that sport should never be used to perpetuate hate speech and stigmatise refugees,” he said. “Sport, in the best traditions, represents the strength of the spirit and overcoming challenges.”

In a statement published on Monday, Legia said that “the behaviour of fans at the stadium or on social media are not the position of the club, which does everything through its actions to set a good example based on values ​​such as respect, fair play and helping those in need”.

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“Legia Warsaw is a club that respects and honours a diversity of views and beliefs” and “stands in solidarity with and support of those who have been wronged”, it added, noting that the club has actively supported refugees from Ukraine. Allen also praised Poland’s support for Ukrainian refugees.

However, the Legia fans’ banner is more likely to have been a reference to the situation on the border with Belarus, where since 2021 tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – have tried to enter Poland.

For Muslims, pigs are considered an unclean animal and eating them is forbidden.

A spokeswoman for Warsaw city hall, Monika Beuth, also criticised the banner, as well as one displayed at the weekend by fans of another club, Polonia Warsaw, that declared the stadium an “LGBT-free zone”.

“We do not accept any manifestations of hate speech, intolerance; such slogans are unacceptable,” she told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. “The [city’s] agreements with the clubs provide for consequences for such behaviour of fans, the city will contact both clubs, expecting a decisive response.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Ekstraklasa, Poland’s top-flight football division in which Legia play, said that the league is gathering evidence about the banners and will discuss them at a meeting on Wednesday.

However, the Legia banner has won praise from far-right figures in Poland and abroad, including Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik, a Polish member of the European Parliament, who shared an image of it along with a heart emoji.

Main image credit: Hooligans.cz/X

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.