Roma criticises Italian football's use of monkeys for anti-racism campaign

AS Roma on Monday criticised an anti-racist campaign from Serie A featuring painted monkeys on social media today. Michael B Thomas / AFP

An anti-racism campaign by Serie A that used art showing monkeys, drew a bemused response from one of its own clubs on Monday night.

"AS Roma was very surprised to see what appears to be an anti-racist campaign from Serie A featuring painted monkeys on social media today," said Roma on their English-language twitter feed. "We understand the league wants to tackle racism but we don't believe this is the right way to do it."

Serie A Managing Director Luigi De Servio had earlier presented an anti-racism plan which included the signing of a charter by a player representing each of the 20 Serie A clubs.

The league also displayed a triptych by Italian artist Simone Fugazzotto at its Milan headquarters which showed three monkeys in close-up but with slightly different colours over the basic brown.

According to the League, the work "aims to defend the values of integration, multiculturalism and fraternity".

Later, as criticism began, the league issued a statement saying "true art is provocation."

Fugazzotto almost always paints monkeys, in a variety of artistic styles, usually wearing human clothes and representing different cultures and historical periods.

"I only paint monkeys as a metaphor for human beings," he said in interviews with the media ahead of the campaign. "We turn the concept back on the racists, as we are all monkeys originally. So, I painted a Western monkey, an Asian monkey and a black monkey."

Italian stadiums are the scene of recurrent racist incidents, including monkey cries aimed at black players.

FARE, a racism monitoring organisation, called the choice of art a "bad joke".

"Once again, Italian football leaves the world speechless. In a country in which the authorities fail to deal with racism week after week, SerieA have launched a campaign that looks like a sick joke," it tweeted

Roma also led the outcry earlier in the month when Italian sports daily Corriere dello Sport ran the front-page headline "Black Friday" to accompany an article about the first Serie A meeting between former Manchester United teammates Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling.

The newspaper protested that its headline was being deliberately mis-interpreted and its intention was to "showcase" the players, adding "we will continue to fight racism and ignorance."