DHAKA: A shocking ad on one of Latin America’s biggest online marketplaces, offering ‘blacks for sale for one real’, has sparked outrage in Brazil and a police investigation.

The ad featured a photo of two black children, and suggested any blacks purchased could ‘serve as carpenters, masons, cooks, security guards, nightclub bouncers, janitors, garbage collectors, or housekeepers’.

Within a few hours, some 1,700 Brazilian responded with outraged comments, reports gulfnews.com.

Government officials also weighed in, with the agency in charge of racial equality urging online vendor MercadoLivre to turn over information on the author of the ad to bring charges against him.

The ad was ‘an offence to the entire society’, rights official Carlos Alberto Silva Junior said.

‘Incitement to discrimination or prejudice by race, colour, ethnicity or religion’ is punishable by two to five years in jail and by a fine, he added.

He emphasised that the internet sites should assume their share of responsibility and put in place filters to block any racist content.

MercadoLivre, the biggest online buying and selling community in Latin America, said it has turned over account information for the person who posted the ad, which went up Sunday, to Rio de Janeiro police and an investigation was planned.

Meanwhile, the site had pulled the ad and condemned it.

BDST: 1900 HRS, JAN 11, 2014
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor