LONDON, June 17: A man who joined in a chant at a football match in which the word “Paki” — short for Pakistani — was used has been ordered to be convicted of a criminal offence.

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind to reach the High Court, two senior judges ruled on Monday that Sean Ratcliffe, 21, was guilty of taking part in chanting of “a racialist nature” contrary to the 1991 Football (Offences) Act.

Ratcliffe had been among a group of Port Vale supporters who chanted “You’re just a town full of Pakis” directed at Oldham Athletic supporters during a league match at the Port Vale ground at Stoke-on-Trent in central England last October.

Oldham, in northwest England, was the scene of race riots in May 2001.

Lord Justice Auld, sitting with Justice Goldring, ruled that there was no doubt that the word “Paki” was “a slang expression which is racially offensive”.

He said: “It is also all too familiar an expression to the courts, used as it so often is as a prelude to violence, whether provoking or offering.”

The judges overturned a decision by Stoke-on-Trent Magistrates’ Court district judge Graham Richards in January this year acquitting Ratcliffe on the grounds that the chant was “mere doggerel” and no offence had been committed.

The High Court judges rejected the contention that the word “Paki” was on a par with Yank, Pom, Aussie or Kiwi and, of itself, not a breach of the law when used in a soccer chant.

The ruling comes as Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf arrives in Britain to start an official four-nation tour on Tuesday that will also take him to the United States, Germany and France.—AFP