US hammer thrower Gwen Berry who turned her back on the American flag has responded to the racist remarks directed at England soccer players.
The Olympian took to Twitter and said that the racist abuse three black players – Bukayo Saka, 19, Marcus Rashford, 23, and Jadon Sancho, 21 – had faced was a ‘heartbreaking situation’ after their defeat, saying fans “only love us when it benefits them.”
The soccer players have received negative remarks after they missed spot-kicks in a penalty shootout.
“Heartbreaking situation! Why am I not surprised! This hate is the reason why athletes cannot ‘just be athletes,’” Berry wrote on Twitter.
“We must stand against these social issues until they no longer affect our lives! Sending my love to Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka and their families.”
“They only love us when it benefits them,” Berry added.
The 32-year-old hammer thrower joined religious leaders, sport stars, politicians and royalty who condemned the racist abuse.
Twitter and Facebook said that they were taking down the remarks directed at the English players.
“The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter,” a spokesperson for Twitter said.
“In the past 24 hours, through a combination of machine learning based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1,000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules – the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology.”
Facebook also said that it had “quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers last night and we’ll continue to take action against those that break our rules.
“No one thing will fix this challenge overnight, but we’re committed to keeping our community safe from abuse.”
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