Despite facing intense backlash for her racist remarks against the French striker Kylian Mbappé, Senator Celeste Amarilla chose to justify herself in the Paraguayan upper house. She shared what made her and common Paraguay fans angry, but used a few more expletives, furthering the situation.
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“So what exactly is it that made us all angry?” Amarilla said before the Senate. “It was when Orlando Gill, a young boy, a kid, who was probably playing in a World Cup for the first time, probably for the first time against Europe, was out there playing before the whole world. He reached out his hand with all the humility of a Paraguayan. And that [expletive] refused to shake his hand and shouted in his face,”
While Amarilla noted it was right that Mbappé walked Gill past after the game, despite the Paraguayan goalie extending his hand, throwing a slur at Mbappé just made things worse.
“France is Rousseau, Descartes, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo, Simone de Beauvoir, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. I refuse to reduce all that great France and that enormous cultural, artistic, and democratic legacy to Mbappé,” she doubled down on her previous criticism of the Real Madrid star.
While Mbappé is a French national, his father, Wilfried Mbappé, is originally from the Cameroonian island of Djébalè. His mother, Fayza Lamari, is of Algerian descent. Previously, Amarilla called Mbappé a “colonized Cameroonian, trying so hard to pretend to be French.”
Now, despite the Paraguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejecting Amarilla’s remarks, saying, “The Government of the Republic of Paraguay condemns and rejects the comments made by Senator Amarilla,” the senator just escalated it further.
And the worst part was that she was not the only senator taking on Mbappé. “If Mbappé says today that he is France, I tell him that Gill is Paraguay. From the moment he disrespected Gill, he messed with all of us,” Senator Yolanda Paredes said of Kylian Mbappé.
So, at this moment, it no longer seems like a long, angry reaction of a Paraguayan senator. The official diplomatic channel of Paraguay rejected these remarks, but attacks keep on coming from their Senate. Mbappé already responded to Amarilla, calling her “unworthy” of her position. We’ll have to wait and see what comes next from the French striker or the French football federation regarding the latest remarks.
