The striker Rodrygo wore a shirt with the message “Pray for RS” in the victory of the Real Madrid against Bayern Munich last week . The phrase of support to the state affected by the storms, however, was distorted and used as fake news in Europe.
In Bosnia, a country located in Eastern Europe, profiles stated that the phrase seen in the game valid for the semifinal of the Champions League was a support of the Brazilian to the Republic of Srpska, which has the same acronym as Rio Grande do Sul.
Republika Srpska, with a population of 1.2 million and made up mostly of Orthodox Christian Serbs, is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The second entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is made up mostly of Bosnian and Croat nationals. Together, the two entities form Bosnia and Herzegovina in a political arrangement made in the Dayton Agreement in December 1995, after the Bosnian War.
During the conflict, between 1992 and 1995, the Republika Srspka even declared itself independent. The group’s biggest demand is to be integrated into Serbia.
Fake news
The use of Rodrygo’s message to spread fake news does not happen out of turn. Recently, the UN (United Nations) began debating the possibility of creating a date to remember the Srebrenica massacre, considered one of the greatest war crimes of the second half of the last century. In the attack, which took place in 1995, the army of the Republic of Srpska invaded the town of Srebrenica and killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men.
In the midst of the debate over the commemoration of the victims of the massacre, the President of the Republic of Srpska, Milorad Dodik, spoke of persecution and asked the world to pray for his people. Thus, according to several false messages spread in Bosnia, Rodrygo would have joined the cause.
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