Well, this is awkward. Over the weekend, Olympic organizers were left red in the cheeks when they accidentally played the wrong national anthem on the loudspeakers ahead of the first men’s basketball game against Puerto Rico.
The audience booed and heckled as the sound of the Sudanese national anthem echoed through the stadium while the South Sudan team appeared on the court. As the spectators continued to boo, the speakers switched off, the sound was completely cut, and then the correct anthem began to play. Thankfully, the crowd appeared to take the whole incident in good spirits and immediately returned to cheering once the correct anthem started to play.
That being said, something like this always requires a statement, and one was soon released by the official organizers of the Paris Olympic Games. The mistake was blamed on simple “human error,” but that didn’t stop one of the players from the game, slamming it as “disrespectful.”
Organizers offered their “most sincere apologies” to the team and added that they “fully understand the gravity” of the error made.
Basketball player Majok Deng, however, said that the organizers need to be “better” – especially considering that they were playing on the “biggest stage” in the world.
While it certainly is a big error, it’s also true that Sudan and South Sudan were one country as recently as 2011. Sudan is the larger country with a bigger population. It’s far more ethnically and religiously diverse than its southern neighbor, which is one of the newest countries in the world. In South Sudan, people speak English as the national language and the majority religion. In Sudan, citizens tend to speak Arabic, and the national religion is Islam.
It’s not the only controversy that the Olympics planning committee has been embroiled in so far. Between the alleged attack on Christianity during the opening ceremony, where drag queens appeared to mimic the famous Last Supper painting, to the heated debates over accessibility to women’s sports, it looks like we’re set for days more of controversy…whatever that might end up being.
