Cheeky tweet from our man in Chile enrages Argentina
He’s threatened with violence over joke about Falklands and football
BRITAIN’S ambassador to Chile has been threatened with violence by furious Argentines over a joke he made about their football team and the Falklands conflict. Jon Benjamin made the faux pas on Twitter to his 10,000 followers when he tried to send a private message to a friend.
It referred to a lewd terrace song often sung by Chilean football fans in rhyming Spanish when they play teams from the neighbouring country: ‘Argentines, gays, they took the Falklands off you because you are cowards.’
In a reference to the offensive song, Mr Benjamin, 49, boasted that he was attending a game: ‘Which islands did they take off who and for being what? Perhaps I’ll discover the answer at the national stadium. I’ve already got my ticket.’
The message upset Argentine fans, who took to Twitter to threaten the diplomat, who is in his first posting as ambassador. One threatened to beat him up if he ever met him while another called him a ‘clown’.
One fan, referring to the Falklands by their Argentine name Las Malvinas, tweeted: ‘Football folklore is beautiful until people bring in issues stained with blood. This is an insult to all the Argentines who lost their lives in the Malvinas.’
Newspaper and TV coverage in Argentina was critical too. National sports daily Ole labelled him rude while a Buenos Aires TV station accused him of disrespecting their nation.
Mr Benjamin, ambassador to Santiago since December 2009 also upset his hosts. Chile’s former telecoms minister Pablo Bello tweeted: ‘Your comments are in bad taste, ambassador. You don’t need to appeal to Chilean nationalist chauvinism to fulfil your diplomatic mission. Doing so reflects badly on you.’
The 1982 Falklands war ended with the Argentines surrendering to British forces 74 days after they invaded the isles.
Mr Benjamin offered an apology on Twitter, saying: ‘I’m sorry I offended with a private message that I published by mistake. I feel great affection for my Argentine friends and respect for their national side.’
A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘Our ambassador to Chile appears to have inadvertently caused some controversy in a tweet. He has deleted it.’
‘This is an insult’
It is believed Mr Benjamin is highly regarded in the Foreign Office and has not been disciplined over the incident.
Single, he describes himself on Twitter as a ‘West Ham fan, Londoner at heart and Jewish atheist’. He attended Slough Grammar School before reading German and Swedish at the University of Surrey.
He began his diplomatic career in 1986 in Pakistan and has also been posted to Indonesia, Burma, Turkey and the US.