Police allegedly forced female fans to strip naked before football match in Russia

Sport 7 August, 2014 13:55

Policemen, who allegedly forced to strip naked female football fans during pre-match security inspections last Friday in Russia’s Kazan, abused their authority and must be brought to account, a senior Russian lawmaker said on Wednesday.
Complaints filed by some female fans of Moscow Spartak FC alleged that they were forced by policemen to strip naked during security checks before their club’s away match against Kazan FC in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan on the Volga River. Those who refused to undergo the humiliating procedure were turned away from the stadium, according to complaints.
“We must make sure that people have access to stadiums and other events without the humiliation of their honor and dignity,” Igor Ananskikh, the chairman of the State Duma Committee for Physical Culture, Sport and Youth Affairs, said.
“Everyone has rights, which must not be violated,” he said. “It is important that people enjoy watching football, but the thing that happened in Kazan is nonsense.”
“Such behavior on behalf of law enforcers is unacceptable. I believe that the people, who provided security at the stadium, must extend their apologies to those, who were subjected to humiliation,” he added.
Sergei Cheban, the executive director of the Russian Football Premier League, said that one of female policemen did “overstep the mark” during security checks, but she was timely notified and exchanged with another policemen before the match.
Kazan is one of the 11 Russian cities selected to host next World Cup’s matches in 2018.
The country won the bid to host the 2018 World Cup over three years ago in a tight race against the joint bid from England, Portugal and Spain and the joint bid on behalf of Belgium and the Netherlands.

Shortly before Brazil’s fabulous city of Rio de Janeiro dropped the curtains on the 2014 World Cup with the final Germany-Argentina clash on July 13, the baton of the global football tournament’s hosting nations was passed on to Russia.
The symbolic hand-over ceremony of the right to host the World Cup tournament was held at the iconic over 74,700-seat capacity Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro and was attended by FIFA President Sepp Blatter, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Blatter said earlier that he intended to pay a visit to Russia in September to monitor the preparation work for the championship in 2018.
Following an official ceremony held in September 2012 and attended by Blatter, Russia eventually selected 11 out of the earlier proposed 13 cities, excluding Krasnodar and Yaroslavl. The final list of the 2018 World Cup host cities includes Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.