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05/06/07 Racial Taunt
This paragraph appeared yesterday evening on the PNZ website's front page:
"It has come to the attention of the PNZ Executive that an incident involving verbal racial abuse occurred at the Masterton Midwinter Doubles. PNZ will not tolerate any form of racial abuse and any member guilty of such behaviour will have their PNZ membership terminated." text taken from the PNZ website.
"It has come to the attention of the PNZ Executive". What does this mean? Has someone made a complaint? If yes, is PNZ acting on this? What is the purpose of the above paragraph? Are we creating an information vacuum again for others to fill? Is this what we need from PNZ after such a successful tournament - I think not.
If you are going to publish something, give the full story (no names, just a brief outline with proposed actions by PNZ). It is no good for PNZ to publish serious allegations without providing some details. Unsubstantiated PNZ allegations of "Racial Taunting" during what most perceive as an excellent tournament with a great atmosphere is damaging. This is not nice publicity for the members of our Masterton club who worked so hard to make this tournament the success it was.
"PNZ will not tolerate any form of racial abuse". Zero tolerance towards "racial abuse" is well established in our NZ society, and goes without saying. I hope our PNZ PR officer will come clean on this "Racial Taunt" item on the Home page of the PNZ website.
What is especially disturbing here is that PNZ did not find it necessary to inform our Masterton club (the host club) of this alleged incident "Racial Taunt". Our club captain, Ralph Priddle, is unaware of any incident. PNZ needs to learn the basic rules and conventions of human interaction if it is to progress forward.
Update 09/06: This was added to the PNZ website today - after I emailed Bryan Wells expressing my abhorrence: "There is no discredit to the members of the Masterton club, who can in no way be blamed for the behaviour of someone who was a guest of their club and not a member of the club." This statement is equally absurd as it is a given, and no one is inferring blame. This is just Bozo ramblings by PNZ.
What is so bad is that this stuff stays at the top the page of the PNZ website. This sort of thing should be part of the general protocols of play – this is the page you explain your policies on.
With all of this PNZ has made for some unfortunate radio advertising for our game. On June 16, 2007 this "Racial Taunting" issue featured on "This Way Up". This Way Up is a National Radio programme with Simon Morton - Saturday, Midday to 2pm. Simon Morton looked up the PNZ website for this great peice of Petanque advertising. He first talked about the bad behaviour of players internationally. He made the connection of turmoil within the NZ petanque community and proceeded to talk about the racial taunting incident in Masterton as an example of this!. Well done PNZ!
The mindless paragraph was finally removed from the top of the front page of the PNZ website during early July, 2007. -Tom.
PS. It is ironic that our Blog and Wiki are from time to time accused of making available "negative" topics on the Web for all to see. (“The Blog is currently not helping in our attempts to get a French team to NZ next year”). Well, we've never made it to National Radio - PNZ takes that dubious honor.
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