Crystal Palace’s Wilfried Zaha was a standout player last weekend as his early goal helped his team to a shock 2-0 win away at Manchester City. However, his superb performance earned him the ire of City fans worldwide, some of whom even took the time to racially abuse the former Manchester United player on Instagram. Deciding that enough is enough, Zaha went on to name and shame those who had sent him racially abusive messages on his Instagram story, and one of the said abusers was apparently an Indonesian.
Indonesian football fans were shocked and appalled to find a countryman of theirs participating in the racial abuse of Zaha, with an Instagram account by the name of @ifiaramadani sending out a volley of racial slurs towards the Crystal Palace attacker through his direct messages. @ifiaramadani’s racist and insulting messages were one of the few being exposed by Zaha in his Instagram stories, immediately triggering a wave of outrage towards @ifiaramadani and support towards Zaha from Indonesian football fans.
@ifiaramadani has since locked their account, changed their username, and subsequently disappeared off Instagram the moment their messages went viral, however, Indonesian netizens sleuths aren’t giving up in their attempts of holding @ifiaramadani accountable for their abuse of Zaha. It was then discovered that the owner of the @ifiaramadani account is in fact a woman named Ifia Mustika Ramadani, a Manchester City fan working as a civil servant somewhere in South Sumatra.
Should Zaha, Crystal Palace, and the Premier League decide to take action against Ifia, then she will be in a world of trouble.
Just this year, Derek Ng, a 19-year old from Singapore, was given a nine-month probationary sentence after he pleaded guilty to sending death threats to Brighton & Hove Albion striker Neil Maupay. An Arsenal fan, Derek lost his cool after Maupay had injured Arsenal goalkeeper Bernd Leno in the Gunners’ visit to Brighton back in June of 2020 before he completely lost his temper when Maupay scored a late winner in the match. The teenager proceeded to send threatening messages to Maupay and his family through the footballer’s Instagram, alluding that he’s going to beat them up and kill them, prompting Maupay to report the abusive messages to the Premier League, who in turn forwarded it to the police.
In addition to his probationary sentence, Derek was also sentenced to 40 hours of community service and was required to undergo psychological treatment.
On why Zaha was willing to expose his abusers to the public, the Crystal Palace talisman had this to say, as quoted from both his Instagram stories and CNN, “This message isn’t for me to get a million messages saying we stand with you and it’s disgusting or about me getting sympathy. I’m not here for all the nonsense that is being done instead of fixing the actual problem!”
“I don’t mind abuse because nowadays it comes with doing the job I do even though it’s not an excuse,” Zaha continued, “But my color will always be the real problem but it’s fine because I’ll always be BLACK AND PROUD!”