It would be the worst tragedy of these characteristics and it took place after the crash, when the fans invaded the pitch and confronted the police
The horror has become real in Indonesia this morning. At least 129 people have died in an Indonesian stadium during a soccer match. During the match between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya in the city of Malang (East Java province), violent riots broke out between hooligans.
Enraged fans invaded the pitch en masse and local police responded to their behaviour. They launched tear gas and it ended up producing a stampede that has given rise to the tragedy, the largest in a soccer field. As a consequence, 129 people have died, most of them due to crushing and suffocation, and it is not discounted that in the next few hours the figure will increase.
According to the authorities, it was the Arema supporters who left their seats first in the face of their team’s 3-2 loss. It was the first time he had lost in two decades to his rival. It is a high-risk game since if we make an analogy with the Spanish league, it would be like Madrid – Barcelona.
His anger was of such a caliber that the agents could not get them to return to the stands and that was when a real pitched battle broke out. In the images recorded by other fans you can see the violent behavior of the hooligans. There are blows, races, throwing of objects, smoke… In the midst of that tumult, two policemen have also died.
The behavior of the Indonesian security forces is questionable since according to the rules of FIFA, the highest institution in world football, the use of “crowd control gas” to maintain public order in stadiums is prohibited. The Indonesian Football Association is investigating the incident and has announced that it will suspend the league for at least a week.
Local authorities have also slipped that more tickets would have been sold than allowed. According to the country’s Minister of Security, Mahfud MD, the venue only has 38,000 seats and no fewer than 42,000 tickets were made available to fans. Likewise, he assures that the Persabaya fans did not have permission to attend the meeting. “The victims generally died from pushing, squeezing and stomping, and from lack of air,” he stressed.
The worst tragedies in a field
His counterpart in Sports, Zainudin Amali, has promised that the security protocols in the matches will be reviewed and that the possibility of prohibiting access to it to the public will even be studied. “We are sorry for this incident. […] that harms our football at a time when fans can go to the stadiums to watch the games, “he said.
In the stadium where the tragedy has occurred, this type of event is not uncommon. In recent decades there have been several of a similar nature, according to local media reports. In the rest of the world, the worst took place in 2001 in Ghana, when 126 people died. Another occurred in Guatemala in 1996, there were 82 deaths. In Europe, the most horrendous took place in the 1986 European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool at the Heysel stadium in Brussels: there were 39 deaths and 500 injuries.
