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By Bloomberg

FIFA will punish national soccer organizations if they don’t start using existing rules to fight racism, according to Vice President Jeffrey Webb.

“FIFA should take actions against the national associations” if they fail to apply penalties including deducting points or moving teams to lower leagues for racist incidents, Webb said in an interview in Asuncion, Paraguay.

The comments from Webb, who is also head of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, come after global soccer head Sepp Blatter used an address at South American soccer’s annual meeting to scold officials for not “having the courage” to punish teams. Partial stadium closures and fines haven’t worked, Blatter said.

Last week Luis Tejada, a striker for Peruvian club Juan Aurich, kicked the ball into the stands and left the field after 70 minutes after being targeted by racist chanting. European soccer’s governing body on March 2 accused Feyenoord fans of racist behavior after a banana was thrown on the field during a Europa League game with Roma.

At its annual congress in 2013 FIFA passed regulations allowing persistent offenders to have points deducted or be relegated. “Not one single committee for control or discipline has adopted it,” Blatter told reporters after his address.

Blatter, campaigning for re-election, has flip-flopped over the issue himself. As recently as 2013 he said he didn’t favor deducting points because rival fans could manipulate measures.

‘Zero Tolerance’

Webb, who is from the Cayman Islands, said he’s planning to set up a hotline for the public to report racist incidents linked to soccer directly, and even send photographic and video evidence.

“We need to action zero tolerance and we’re not doing that as a football fraternity, we’re not doing that period,” Webb said.

Tackling racial abuse in the 2018 World Cup host Russia remains a concern for FIFA, secretary general Jerome Valcke said. There were more than 200 cases of discriminatory behavior linked to soccer in the country over the past two years, according to a report published by anti-discrimination groups.

“Racism and discrimination in Russia could be an issue and we have to make sure that nothing would happen at the World Cup,” Valcke said in an interview. “It’s a little late already for the education of people but we have to make sure that whoever has the idea to do anything wrong he knows that sanctions will be so high.”