In total solidarity with referee Omar Artan

Dear Editor,
CAF and African football have a moral duty to stand with Omar Artan and demand accountability for the discriminatory treatment he has faced.

Unfairly, denying him a visa to officiate in a FIFA tournament on US soil raises profound questions about equality, fairness, and respect within global sport.

Football is built on principles of inclusion, dignity, non‑discrimination, and international solidarity. No individual should be excluded because of their nationality, ethnicity, religion, or place of birth. To deny a qualified referee the opportunity to perform his duties on such grounds, simply because he is Somali, African, and Muslim, is unconscionable, cowardly, and unjust. It violates the very values Fifa, Caf, and the global football community claim to uphold.

Africa, perhaps more than any other continent, understands the destructive impact of racism, bigotry, and discrimination. Having endured centuries of slavery, colonialism, segregation, and exclusion, Africans have a special responsibility to confront injustice wherever it appears and regardless of who perpetrates it. Silence in the face of discrimination is complicity. Africa must stand firmly with Omar Artan and insist that he be treated with the same dignity and respect accorded to every other official.

Omar Artan must be at the World Cup, otherwise, Africa must be prepared to pull out.

More broadly, sport cannot be divorced from fundamental human values. The purpose of sport is not merely competition. It is also to promote unity, mutual respect, friendship, justice, and our shared humanity. America’s arrogance and rogue leadership cannot be ignored. The world must not sit by while the US bullies, violates, and dismantles laws, rights, peace, justice, dignity, and humanity, without shame or regret.

As an enabler of the genocide being committed by Israel, a chronic violator of international law, and one of the greatest threats to human rights and global peace, the United States stands in total contravention of the noble spirit of sport.

Therefore, FIFA and its affiliated confederations must ban the US from all sporting activities until it ceases its path of terror, aggression, arrogance, and blatant disregard for basic human decency. The international community cannot remain indifferent when powerful states act in ways that contradict the principles they publicly champion.

Justice, equality, and human dignity must apply to all people equally, without exception. The world cannot afford and must not tolerate powerful rogue states like the US running roughshod across the planet, pillaging nations, lives, economies, and futures.

Stop America now.

Madi Jobarteh
Kembujeh