Indonesian Soccer TragedyAuthorities Will Work to Identify Suspects in Stampede Within Days

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Supporters of Arema Football Club mourning the victims of the stampede outside Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, East Java, on Monday.Credit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

Indonesia says police officers suspected of wrongdoing will face criminal charges.

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Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, on Monday.Credit...Juni Kriswanto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia announced on Monday that it would set up a commission to investigate the deaths of at least 125 people at a soccer stadium over the weekend, adding that it hoped to identify the police officers suspected of having had a role in the tragedy within days.

As public anger mounted, Mahfud MD, the chief security minister, said that officers suspected of committing acts of wrongful violence while on duty at the stadium would face criminal charges.

The disaster, which unfolded on Saturday in the city of Malang, where thousands of supporters had gathered to see the home team, Arema, host Persebaya Surabaya, has prompted widespread accusations that police actions contributed to turning minor unrest into one of the deadliest stadium catastrophes in history.

After Arema suffered a surprise 3-2 defeat, some fans ran onto the field. Officers kicked and clubbed them, then fired tear gas into the stands, witnesses said, causing people to flee into narrow exit corridors.

Mohammad Choirul Anam, a member of the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights, said that only two exits were open in the stadium and that the use of tear gas by the police appeared to have been a key factor in the crush at the exits.

The dead included 33 children aged 4 to 17, Nahar, an official at the Indonesian ministry for women’s empowerment and child protection, told The New York Times.

“I’m still thinking: ‘Did all this really happen?’” said Felix Mustikasakti Afoan Tumbaz, a 23-year-old fan whose right leg was injured when a tear-gas canister landed on him in the chaos. “How could such a tragedy occur and kill so many people?”

Listyo Sigit Prabowo, the national police chief, said on Monday that the authorities had opened an internal investigation and interviewed 18 officers who had fired tear gas. Military personnel who were seen hitting fans would also face punishment, Mr. Mahfud said. Ferli Hidayat, the police chief in Malang, was among nine local officers suspended on Monday, a national police spokesman told a news conference.

Mr. Mahfud added that the commission’s investigation would take two to four weeks to complete. He named 10 members to the body, including two academics, two retired military officers, a former police official, a former soccer league official, a former soccer player and a sports journalist.

The investigation would consider national sports policy and the role of anyone who might have contributed to the deaths, and it would not be limited solely to those at the stadium on Saturday, Mr. Mahfud said.

He noted that the authorities would provide compensation of about $4,230 to the family of each victim. The average per capita income in Indonesia was $3,092 in 2020, according to World Bank figures.

Indonesian human rights official says tear gas likely played a key role in the disaster.

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Police inside the Kanjuruhan Stadium on Monday.Credit...Mast Irham/EPA, via Shutterstock

MALANG, Indonesia — An Indonesian human rights official said that just two exits were open in the Kanjuruhan Stadium, where the police fired tear gas into stands holding thousands of people, adding that the use of tear gas appeared to play a key role in the crush of fleeing people that killed as many as 125.

Mohammad Choirul Anam, a member of Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights, said his organization would investigate the disaster and the role of the police. The police have said that fans attacked officers and that the use of force was necessary. The government appointed an independent commission to investigate the deaths on Monday.

“From the videos that have been circulated, there were violent actions,” Mr. Anam said. “Not only the usage of tear gas, but also there was also use of force. We want to investigate why that happened.”

He said an initial examination suggested that tear gas played a major role in the disaster. If it had not been used, “there’s a possibility that there would be no stampede.”

Human rights investigators would also look at the design of the stadium, where the victims were found and what sort of injuries they had, Mr. Anam said.

The disaster unfolded after a match in which Arema Football Club lost to Persebaya Surabayafor the first time in more than 20 years.

The president of Arema F.C. apologized for the catastrophe on Monday.

“Honestly, we are very shocked, we are devastated,” said the club president, Gilang Widya Pramana, choking up as his eyes welled with tears. “We are lost for words on how it could have come to so many victims.”

Mr. Pramana said he apologized to the victims and their families, the soccer league, the police, the Indonesian people and the president of the country, Joko Widodo. He said the club intended to pay compensation to the victims and their families.

He described the carnage on Saturday as unexpected, noting that there were no visiting fans in the stadium to clash with Arema supporters. After Arema lost on Saturday, some fans of the home team rushed onto the field. The police fired tear gas and hit fans with batons, witnesses said, driving them into narrow exit corridors where they crushed against one another.

“They are good supporters,” said Mr. Pramana. “But that night, I never expected that this would ever happen.”

Sudarmaji, a spokesman for Arema, denied reports that tickets to the game had been oversold, increasing the safety risk in the stadium. Mr. Sudarmaji, who goes by one name, declined to answer questions about witness statements that the exits were closed as the crowd tried to escape the tear gas.

Mr. Pramana said that many of the Arema players helped the injured, and their dressing room was later used to hold the bodies of those who died. “They are very shocked and sad,” he added.

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Arema’s coach said players had tried to help victims of the disaster. Some died in the changing rooms.

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Javier Roca, the coach of Arema F.C., meeting with a relative of a victim of the deadly stampede that occurred after the team’s match in Malang on Saturday.Credit...Putri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MALANG, Indonesia — The coach of the Indonesian soccer team Arema F.C. said he and the players are “destroyed” after they witnessed fans die in the changing rooms during the stampede that killed at least 125 people, including 33 children, at a soccer stadium over the weekend.

Javier Roca, a former professional soccer player from Chile, had been coaching Arema for less than a month when on Saturday minor unrest at the club’s home ground in Malang turned into one of the deadliest stadium catastrophes in history.

Arema’s surprise 3-2 loss prompted some fans to run onto the field after the game — a “normal” occurrence, Roca said. But on this occasion, officers fired tear gas into the stands, witnesses said, causing people to flee into narrow exit corridors. Many were killed in the crush.

Speaking on Monday, Roca said he realized something was wrong only after his post-match news conference, when his eyes and throat started to feel sore from what he later discovered was tear gas exposure. He returned to the changing rooms to find that badly injured fans had been taken for treatment there, where players tried to help them. Some died there, he said.

“When I returned to the changing room, it was already chaos,” Roca said. “Many people are out of breath, having breathing difficulties.”

He said one fan had died in a player’s arms.

“They are destroyed,” Roca said. “They witnessed the first death in the changing room. Then the second, the third, fourth.” He said some of the victims they had seen were children who could not breathe. “Everybody is devastated,” he added.

Roca said he and Arema’s players have been visiting the families of victims to express their condolences in person. On Monday, they visited the family of a 15-year-old girl who had died in the tragedy.

Indonesia on Monday announced an investigation into the disaster. Ferli Hidayat, the police chief in Malang, was dismissed, as were nine provincial mobile brigade commanders, a national police spokesman told a news conference. In all, 28 officers are being investigated.

Roca said he hoped the incident would lead to change.

“All parties have to introspect,” he said. “Football is football. You can win, you can lose, you can draw. What cannot be lost is loss of lives.”

Sui-Lee Wee contributed reporting from Bangkok.

At the Malang stadium, tear gas fired by the police had also turned deadly in 2018.

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Arema players paying tribute at Kanjuruhan Stadium on Monday.Credit...Mast Irham/EPA, via Shutterstock


For the fans of Arema F.C. in East Java, Saturday was not the first time that tear gas fired by the police had turned deadly.

More than four years ago, riot police fired the chemical at the Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang to quell violence during a match between Arema and Persib, a rival soccer team from West Java.

The game was tied at 2-2 but Arema fans were angry at the referee for what they considered were bad calls. When the match stretched into the the third minute of injury time, some of the fans got on the field and started clashing with the referee, halting the game and prompting police to fire tear gas.

In all, 214 people were injured from the tear gas on that day in April 2018.

During the chaos, Dimas Dhua Ramli, a 16-year-old boy, told a friend that he could not breathe and was dizzy. He was trampled upon during the stampede, his friend told Detik.com, a local news website. But he decided not to take the ambulance to the hospital and returned home.

For a week later, the 10th-grader said he had a headache and felt weak. His arms and neck swelled up. He was taken to the hospital a week after the game, on April 15. His condition deteriorated so much that two days later he was transferred to another hospital with an intensive care unit.

Dimas — a life-long “Aremania,” or Arema fan — died three days later.

There were no reports on whether there was an investigation into his death or how the police had handled the riots. The police did not respond to a query Monday for comment on whether they had looked into Dimas’ case.

But that year, Tribunnews.com, a local news website owned by the Indonesian media giant Kompas, posted a tweet that said people should not find fault with Arema, the fans, the referee, and the police who fired the tear gas.

“Let’s all improve,” the news website said. “Dimas’ death must be the last.”

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Arema fans gather for a weeklong vigil to pay respects to the dead.

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Hundreds of mourners gathered at vigils following the deaths of over 125 people during a stampede at a soccer game. The stampede was triggered after the police fired tear gas into the crowds.CreditCredit...Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

MALANG, Indonesia — Hundreds of Arema F.C. fans gathered at Gajayana Stadium in Malang for a weeklong vigil to mourn the deaths of over 125 spectators killed at an Indonesian soccer match in one of the deadliest sports stadium disasters in history.

Some of those at the vigil had attended the match on Saturday at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang where the crush took place after police fired tear gas into tightly packed crowds, setting off a stampede. Soccer fans had packed the stadium to see the home team — Arema — take on Persebaya Surabaya. After Arema lost the game 3-2, fans rushed the field.

On Sunday, banners at the vigil read “a thousand deaths can’t be replaced with one single win.” Candles and flowers decorated Gajayana stadium, Arema’s former home ground.

After a moment of silence to respect the deceased, the mourners, dressed in black, shared prayers and songs.

Tito Dwimauludi, a 28-year-old technician at the vigil who watched Saturday’s game with his friend, described the disaster as “chaos,” adding that he lost count of how many times police officers used tear gas. Everyone panicked, he said, but they were trapped because of the limited exits and the disorder outside the stadium.

Both he and his friend were unharmed, other than their eyes stinging from the tear gas. “I pray nothing like this will ever happen again,” he said, adding that his wife and son had been waiting at home without any idea of what had happened to him throughout the game.

Rafi Alfiansyah, a 22-year-old waiter, had attended the match in a group of 10. When the police began to spray tear gas, the group was separated in the commotion and used WhatsApp to find each other. By the time Mr. Alfiansyah got out of the stadium, it was 1 a.m. He said he and his friends were all tear gassed. “It was very hot. And the smell is very strong,” he said. Two of his friends were hospitalized, but were not seriously injured, he said.

“We are paying respect to our fellow Aremania,” he said, using the term for Arema supporters.

Sorrow and anger mix as families and Arema supporters mourn the victims.

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Relatives of victims waited outside a hospital in Malang, East Java, on Sunday after the deadly episode at the soccer stadium there.Credit...Juni Kriswanto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MALANG, Indonesia — At the Saiful Anwar Hospital in Malang, where many of those injured in the stadium disaster in Indonesia were taken, dozens of family members waited anxiously for news of relatives on Sunday evening.

They sat on mats or slumped exhausted on benches, with bags of fruit and bottles of water. Some had toddlers. When a name was called, relatives rushed into the emergency wing.

Bambang Siswanto and his wife were among them. They had insisted that their 19-year-old son stay home and watch the match on TV. But the teenager, Gilang Putra Yuliazah, a mechanic and a rabid Arema fan, went to the stadium with his cousin.

When the stampede begun, Mr. Siswanto’s son fainted. His cousin, 17, died.

“I took him home together with the corpse of my nephew,” he said. “Too cruel. The police are too cruel.”

Later that night, hundreds of Arema fans gathered in at the Gajayana stadium, where the team had won their first title, for a vigil. Many wore black and carried flowers, candles and banners — including one that said “Investigate thoroughly #arema malang.”

At one point those gathered started singing: “Mr. policeman, Mr. policeman your job is to protect not to compete.”

Tito Dwimauludi, 28, had survived the stampede and came to the vigil to pay his respects to his fellow Arema fans.

“I will not watch football at the stadium again,” he said. “I pray nothing like this will ever happen again.”

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ON SOCCER

The sport has to confront the failures of policing, security and crowd management.

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A soccer fan entering the pitch while police officers stood guard during a riot following a soccer match at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, East Java, Indonesia, on Saturday.Credit...H Prabowo/EPA, via Shutterstock

The tear gas still hung thick in the air at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, as law enforcement reached into a playbook that is grimly familiar across the world.

Officers had been given no choice but to fire the chemical into the crowd, the police chief for the province of East Java, Nico Afinta, said, “because there was anarchy.” The nightmarish scale of the disaster was not yet clear. Yet the police, the chief said, had to act. “They were about to attack the officers and had damaged the cars,” he said.

The accusation that fans were to blame for another soccer tragedy was immediately recognizable from the tragedy at the Olembé Stadium in Cameroon — where eight people died in January during the Africa Cup of Nations — and the near miss in May at the Champions League final, European soccer’s showpiece game, in Paris.

Those two incidents happened this year, but the trope dates back further: for example, to Port Said, Egypt, where 74 fans were killed in 2012; to Sheffield, England, where 97 Liverpool supporters went to a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium and never came home in 1989.

These are rare incidents, given the global scale of the sport, but they are bound by a common thread: When tragedies occur in soccer, they tend not to be the result of fan violence, but of an overzealous and, at times, aggressive style of policing that treats a large crowd as a threat and turns a game into a hazard.

“It speaks to a mind-set that is too often too oriented toward public order, rather than public safety,” said Owen West, a senior lecturer in policing at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, England. “You can see officers in full riot gear, crowd control munitions. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

He said law enforcement agencies assumed a need to “control” the crowd, and therefore tended to be “overzealous and over-resourced.” “Too often, it is actually the police action that triggers the adverse reaction in the crowds,” he said.

Experts question the police use of tear gas in the stadium.

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A riot police officer fired tear gas at Kanjuruhan Stadium, Malang, East Java province, Indonesia, on Sunday.Credit...Antara Foto/Via Reuters

Human rights and policing experts have raised questions about police tactics in the deadly crush that killed at least 125 people at a soccer match in Indonesia, particularly the use of tear gas.

The gas, which causes intense burning sensations in the eyes, mouth, nose, lungs and on skin, is an indiscriminate weapon, which can affect large groups of people. Those who are not immobilized will likely try to flee however they can.

Tear gas is particularly risky to use in secure areas such as a football stadium where people have nowhere to go, said Owen West, a senior lecturer on policing at the Edge Hill University in Britain.

“It is incredibly, incredibly dangerous to use a dispersal tactic such as tear gas in this case,” Mr. West said. “That is a distance weapon. It is there to bring distance between the crowd and the police. It is there to disperse. And chiefly in the minds of police officers thinking about that tactic ought to be well, if we do use this device, where do we expect people disperse to?”

Tear gas has been a factor in several previous stadium disasters, as people in crowds press upon one another as they attempt to flee through limited or even locked exits. FIFA, the world soccer governing body, says in its regulations for stadium safety that no “crowd control gas” should be carried or used by stewards or police officers responsible for security at matches.

Usman Hamid, Amnesty International’s executive director for Indonesia, said in a written statement that tear gas “should only be used to disperse crowds when widespread violence has occurred and when other methods have failed.”

Mr. Hamid said the crowd should have been given warning and an opportunity to disperse. “Tear gas should also never be fired in confined spaces,” he added.

While the reaction of the fans in Indonesia was sometimes described as panicked, their behavior makes perfect sense given the effects of tear gas, said Mr. West. “Running away from something that is doing so much damage to your breathing and eyesight and general health, that is an entirely rational decision,” he added.

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The global soccer community mourned the death of fans in Indonesia.

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Players of Espanyol and Valencia observing a minute of silence before their match in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday.Credit...Marta Perez/EPA, via Shutterstock

At soccer matches around the world on Sunday, fans, players and coaches marked the death of at least 125 people at a game in Indonesia.

Clubs in the top division of the Spanish league paused before their games on Sunday, with players from Espanyol and Valencia gathering arm-in-arm at the center circle as music softly played for a minute. The league tweeted a video of the moment with a darkened heart and the flag of Indonesia.

The top Dutch league also observed a minute of silence at the start of all its matches on Sunday in memory of the dead in Indonesia.

Liverpool, the English team that lost 97 supporters in a disaster at Hillsborough Stadium in 1989, said it was “deeply saddened” by the deaths in Indonesia. “The thoughts of everyone at Liverpool Football Club are with all those affected at this time,” the club added.

A police focus on establishing order instead of safety can magnify danger, a policing expert says.

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Security officers in riot gear clashed with fans at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, East Java, Indonesia, on Saturday.Credit...H Prabowo/EPA, via Shutterstock

While investigators begin to examine the deadly stampede at an Indonesian soccer match that witnesses said began after police used tear gas, a leading expert in crowd policing said that a focus on public order rather than public safety in stadiums can often bring the police to overreact, causing dangerous escalations.

Owen West, a senior lecturer on policing at Edge Hill University in Britain, said that officers attending matches wearing full riot gear and carrying crowd-control munitions out of concern that the situation could get out of control can end up triggering the kind of public disorder that they feared.

“It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said, adding that the police’s excessive zeal, equipment, and actions are often responsible for provoking an adverse reaction in crowds around the world. “I pray nothing like this will ever happen again.”

President Joko Widodo of Indonesia said that he has asked the national police chief to conduct a thorough investigation into what happened and ordered an evaluation of security at soccer matches.

Mr. West said that at the match on Saturday night in Malang, the firing of tear gas threw all those present into a panic — whether they were causing trouble or just happened to be in the stadium. It was “incredibly dangerous,” he said. The gas inevitably pushes people to disperse and run away, and asking the question of where the people will run is paramount, Mr. West added.

The stadium in Malang was reportedly filled beyond capacity with many of its exits closed, which made the decision to use tear gas even more dangerous, Mr. West said.

“It’s reckless to do it,” he said.

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This is the latest in a grim history of deadly episodes at soccer stadiums.

Soccer matches around the world have seen deadly stadium disasters, sometimes set off by crowd violence and often made worse by inept police responses that result in spectators being crushed as they try to flee.

These deadly events have prompted major changes, like phasing out fenced-in terraces where crowds of fans can stand in favor of seating-only stadiums. But fatal tramplings still occur, with more than 125 killed in Indonesia on Saturday.

Here are some of the worst past disasters.

Peru - 1964

More than 300 people were killed and more than 500 injured in a riot in Lima, Peru, set off by a referee’s decision to nullify Peru’s equalizing goal in the final minutes of an Olympic qualifying match against Argentina. In that May 24, 1964, episode, some fans stormed the field of the Estadio Nacional, and others hurled objects at the police, who responded by throwing tear gas grenades, driving panicking crowds into locked exit corridors. Most of those killed were trampled to death in the tunnels, but an unknown number were shot by the police.

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People fleeing tear gas at the Estadio Nacional in Lima on May 24, 1964.Credit...El Comercio, via Associated Press

Russia - 1982

The deadly crush at a match between a Moscow team and the visiting Dutch side on Oct. 20, 1982, was long wrapped in secrecy. Official reports mentioned only a handful of injuries, until it emerged in 1989 that at least 66 people had been killed, with one Soviet newspaper saying the death toll was as high as 340. The blame was first put on football hooligans, but Soviet news media later said the police had forced fans out through a single corridor at the Luzhniki Stadium, where they were crushed as others tried to rush back into the stadium after hearing news of a late goal from the Soviet side.

England - 1989

Local authorities and some news outlets had long blamed drunk and unruly Liverpool supporters for the death of 97 soccer fans at a F.A. Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in Sheffield on April 15, 1989. That notion was rejected by a British inquest in 2016, which found that those killed in the Hillsborough Stadium had been the victims of mistakes by the police. It was a vindication that survivors had been seeking for decades. That disaster spurred safety reforms, including the removal of standing areas and fences around soccer fields.

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Fans being lifted to safety from the central pens in the Leppings Lane stand at the Hillsborough Stadium on April 15, 1989.Credit...Popperfoto via Getty Images

Ghana - 2001

When fans of Kumasi Asante Kotoko began to throw objects onto the field as their team fell behind their chief rival, Hearts of Oak, on May 9, 2001, the police fired tear gas into the stands, setting off a chaotic race for the exits that killed 126 people. Joe Aggrey, the deputy sports minister of Ghana, told the BBC that he believed the use of tear gas caused the disaster, adding he saw groups of young dead men too numerous for him to count. “I’m devastated,” he said.

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