LONDON: A racist slur has been removed from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office website following a report by The Independent newspaper.
The word, an offensive term for people of African origin, was discovered in the comments section underneath an article published in 2012 by the-then British ambassador to Somalia.
Other comments that appeared on the 11-year-old article included descriptions of Somalis as “very cunning and greedy people” and Somalia as a country that needed “saving from itself.”
The FCDO removed the racist term from the website once The Independent pointed it out, and reiterated that all content was supposed to go through a moderation process.
A statement issued by a spokesperson for the FCDO said: “Our gov.uk moderation policy makes clear we do not tolerate offensive or inflammatory language. These comments on a blog from 2012 fall short of those standards and have now been removed.”
Last week, the British government said a review or investigation into documentation was not needed, and that it was “confident” the word did not appear in any other documents.
However, the Independent investigation revealed last week that the word had also been used in a 2012 report by British weather service the Met Office, paperwork from 2010 issued by the Department for Work and Pensions and in a comment in a 2015 blog post titled “Equality in the Civil Service: Talking about Race.”
The Met Office apologized “for any offence caused” by the language used in its report, while the DWP launched an inquiry into how the document remained in circulation for so long.
Despite a statement from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak denouncing the word as “inappropriate and offensive,” its prevalence has prompted politicians from several parties to call for a government-wide review of official documents.
“Swift action is needed from a Conservative government that has previously refused to accept structural racism even exists. Labour is serious about rooting out the structural racial inequality that scars our society and will introduce a landmark Race Equality Act to tackle it at source,” a Labour spokesperson told The Independent.
“These revelations are truly shocking, racist terms and racism in any form has absolutely no place in our society or our government,” Liberal Democrat MP Christine Jardine said.
