Gini Wijnaldum has responded to the racial abuse suffered by a Dutch second division player and says he would walk off the pitch if the same thing happened to him.
Wijnaldum was speaking ahead of the Netherlands' final Euro 2020 qualifier against Estonia tonight after Excelsior striker Ahmad Mendes Moreira was subjected to racist chanting during his side's game against FC Den Bosch on Sunday.
The referee was forced to stop play for more than 30 minutes after Moreira and his teammates left the field.
Wijnaldum expressed his shock and anger at the incident in his country, describing it as "despicable".
"It really hit me on a personal level," he told reporters.
"I never expected anything like this to happen in the Netherlands. I'm really shocked. It did happen, unfortunately, and the way people have talked about the incident really hurt me.
"It's a problem in society. As a player, you can't really change anything about it. But I still think that players should try and support each other. It's a problem in society and a problem that should be solved by our politicians.
"I hope that there will be severe punishments. This really can't happen again. It's not just the racism to the player from Excelsior, but I also saw someone doing the Nazi salute in the stands. When I saw that, I thought, 'What is wrong with you if you do something like that?'
"Our ancestors fought for us so we can live freely. If people still perform the Nazi salute, that's utterly disrespectful. That just can't happen. We can't allow that in the Netherlands. That's what I think. There have to be severe punishments.
Wijnaldum was also angry at the way Moreira was spoken about afterwards.
An initial response from Den Bosch claimed the player had mistaken racist chanting for "crow sounds" - and the team's manager Erik Van der Ven called him a "pathetic little man" after celebrating in front of the Den Bosch fans after scoring.
Den Bosch have since apologised for the statement.
Wijnaldum added: "I think the KNVB did well, saying that they will look into the matter and see what happened.
"But I think it's really despicable what Den Bosch did. I might not be allowed to say things like that, but I don't care anymore.
"I think we need to see very high fines. I heard that they want to install cameras to find out who the culprits are. The punishments need to be so severe that nobody even thinks of doing something like this ever again.
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"We want to play football to enjoy ourselves, we want to entertain our supporters. We don't want to see things like this happening."
When asked if he would leave the field if he was targeted with similar abuse, Wijnaldum said: "I walk off the pitch. I'm going for sure. I'll never accept that.
"You shouldn't come back on the pitch. What is the point in coming back? What has changed? Everything just stays the same.
"We talked about it with our guys. Look at our squad. We are one. We don't look at skin colour. We play for the Dutch team, we play for this shirt, we play for the people.
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"We play so we can entertain the people; we play so we can be at a big tournament such as the Euros again.
"We are so happy about qualifying and then this happens a day later. It's so surreal because those people that did this will be cheering for us if we perform well at the Euros."
