Jarren Duran suspended 2 games by Red Sox for shouting homophobic slur at fan who heckled him

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Jarren Duran suspended 2 games by Red Sox for shouting homophobic slur at fan who heckled him

2024-08-13 11:26 Last Updated At：11:30

BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Red Sox suspended Jarren Duran for two games on Monday without pay after he shouted a homophobic slur to a fan behind home plate who heckled him in a loss to the Houston Astros a day earlier.

The exchange was caught on a live microphone during the broadcast when Duran — who was 0 for 2 with two strikeouts at that point in the game — was at the plate in the sixth inning. A fan at Fenway Park can be heard shouting “Tennis racket! Tennis racket! You need a tennis racket!”

Duran turned his head toward the fan and replied: “Shut up,” followed by a curse word and the slur.

Duran issued an apology through the team Sunday night, saying he “used a truly horrific word” and felt “awful.”

Standing in the middle of the clubhouse before he answered questions Monday, Duran started by apologizing to fans that he said reached out to him and said: “they were disappointed in me.”

“I’m sorry for my actions, and I’m going to work on being better,” the 27-year-old outfielder said.

“We all love Jarren,” teammate Rob Refsnyder said after hitting a walk-off single in Boston's 5-4, 10-inning win over Texas on Monday night. “He'll learn from this. We're all human. We all make mistakes, but he'll learn from this.”

President and Chief Executive Officer Sam Kennedy said the club was in touch with Major League Baseball after the game.

“It’s a really difficult day, disappointing,” Kennedy said, speaking to the media outside the clubhouse. “I’m proud of the way the organization addressed the situation, and I’m proud of Jarren for acknowledging his horrific mistake.”

Standing next to Kennedy, Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow said the team still had work to do.

“I think it is striking evidence that while we have made strides and done great work, we haven’t done nearly enough,” he said. “I think that an incident like this is an important reminder that there’s ton of progress that still needs to be made.”

Duran said the fan had been “heckling me the entire game, and I said something I shouldn’t have said.”

Duran said he immediately turned and apologized to home plate umpire Jordan Baker and Houston catcher Yainer Diaz “for my actions. They were right there, they heard me say it. I’m assuming they cut the mic because of my inappropriate word.”

Red Sox manager Alex Cora said: “There’s a lot of work to be done, and I’m here to help him out.”

Cora said he had spoken to Duran during the day.

“He made a big mistake, he’s living with it, right,” Cora said. “As a manager, I’ve got to do my job. As a person, there’s more from my end. … It’s what I can do as a person to support him and help him to be better.”

Duran had played in all of the team's games so far this season, hitting mostly leadoff and is one of the club's top players, batting .291 with 14 homers and 58 RBIs. He was the MVP of the All-Star game in Texas, the fifth Red Sox player to win the award.

He said there was no intent behind the word, and it was just “the heat of the moment.”

“I think what’s more important is what happens going forward,” Kennedy said. “We’ve worked really hard the past two and half decades to make sure that Fenway Park is a place where everyone is welcome.”

Boston said Duran’s salary during the suspension will be donated to PFLAG (Federation of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Duran earns $760,000 and will lose $8,172.

The exchange with the fan came after Duran was honored during a pregame ceremony as the team’s recipient of the Heart and Hustle Award, which recognizes one player per team who “demonstrates a passion for the game and best embodies its values, spirit, and traditions.”

“I think the suspension is just discipline, and we need to hold people accountable,” Kennedy said. “What I would like to see is more education, more understanding, more dialogue around the negative impact of hate speech.”

Because the team suspended him, the Red Sox were allowed to fill his roster spot.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Indian parliament's Lower House passes controversial bill that would change Muslim endowments

2025-04-03 17:22 Last Updated At：17:31

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — The Lower House of India's parliament early Thursday passed a controversial bill moved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government to amend laws governing Muslim land endowments.

The bill would add non-Muslims to boards that manage waqf land endowments and give the government a larger role in validating their land holdings. The government says the changes will help to fight corruption and mismanagement while promoting diversity, but critics fear that it will further undermine the rights of the country’s Muslim minority and could be used to confiscate historic mosques and other property.

As hourslong debate in the Lower House grew heated as the Congress-led opposition firmly opposed the proposal, calling it unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party lacks a majority in the Lower House, but its allies helped to pass the bill.

The debate that began Wednesday ended with 288 members voting for the bill while 232 were against it early Thursday. The bill will now need to clear the Upper House before it is sent to President Droupadi Murmu for her assent to become law.

Later Thursday, lawmakers in the Upper House began debating the bill. At least eight hours have been set aside for discussion.

Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju introduced the bill to change a 1995 law that set rules for the foundations and set up state-level boards to administer them.

Many Muslim groups as well as the opposition parties say the proposal is discriminatory, politically motivated and an attempt by Modi’s ruling party to weaken minority rights.

The bill was first introduced in parliament last year, and opposition leaders have said some of their subsequent proposals on it were ignored. The government has said opposition parties are using rumors to discredit them and block transparency in managing the endowments.

Waqfs are a traditional type of Islamic charitable foundation in which a donor permanently sets aside property — often but not always real estate — for religious or charitable purposes. Waqf properties cannot be sold or transferred.

Waqfs in India control 872,000 properties that cover 405,000 hectares (1 million acres) of land, worth an estimated $14.22 billion. Some of these endowments date back centuries, and many are used for mosques, seminaries, graveyards and orphanages.

In India, waqf property is managed by semi-official boards, one for each state and federally run union territory. The law would require non-Muslims to be appointed to the boards.

Currently, waqf boards are staffed by Muslims, like similar bodies that help administer other religious charities.

During the parliamentary debate, Home Minister Amit Shah said non-Muslims would be included in waqf boards only for administration purposes and helping run the endowments smoothly. He added that they were not there to interfere in religious affairs.

“The (non-Muslim) members will monitor whether the administration is running as per law or not, and whether the donations are being used for what they were intended or not,” he said.

One of the most controversial changes is to ownership rules, which could impact historical mosques, shrines and graveyards since many such properties lack formal documentation as they were donated without legal records decades, and even centuries, ago.

Other changes could impact mosques on land held in centuries-old waqfs.

Radical Hindu groups have laid claim to several mosques around India, arguing they are built on the ruins of important Hindu temples. Many such cases are pending in courts.

The law would require waqf boards to seek approval from a district level officer to confirm the waqfs’ claims to property.

Critics say that would undermine the board and could lead to Muslims being stripped of their land. It’s not clear how often the boards would be asked to confirm such claims to land.

“The Waqf (Amendment) Bill is a weapon aimed at marginalising Muslims and usurping their personal laws and property rights,” Rahul Gandhi, the main opposition leader, wrote on social media platform X. He said the bill was an “attack on the Constitution” by the BJP and its allies “aimed at Muslims today but sets a precedent to target other communities in the future.”

While many Muslims agree that waqfs suffer from corruption, encroachments and poor management, they also fear that the new law could give India’s Hindu nationalist government far greater control over Muslim properties, particularly at a time when attacks against minority communities have become more aggressive under Modi, with Muslims often targeted for everything from their food and clothing styles to inter-religious marriages.

Last month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its annual report that religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate while Modi and his party “propagated hateful rhetoric and disinformation against Muslims and other religious minorities” during last year’s election campaign.

Modi’s government says India is run on democratic principles of equality and no discrimination exists in the country.

Muslims, who are 14% of India’s 1.4 billion population, are the largest minority group in the Hindu-majority nation but they are also the poorest, a 2013 government survey found.