Saturday 1er October, Kanjuruhan Stadium, near the city of Malang, on the island of Java, Indonesia, was the scene of one of the worst football stadium tragedies ever. At least 125 people died in a crowd movement, according to a latest report from local authorities revised downwards.
Initially, several thousand angry fans of the Arema FC team entered the pitch at Kanjuruhan Stadium, after their team lost 3-2 to Persebaya Surabaya. The supporters were then sprayed with tear gas by the police. Many people were fatally trampled; survivors described panicking spectators, blocked by the crowd.
Author of the book Ultras, the other protagonists of football (Mare and Martin, November 2017, 440 pages), the historian and sociologist Sebastien Louis had traveled to Kanjuruhan Stadium in 2018.
How is the passion for football characterized in Indonesia?
It’s not widely known, but Indonesia is a country where people are football fanatics. When there is a match between two clubs whose supporters are rivals or friends, it attracts considerable audiences. The “mania”, these are the local supporters organized on the South American model. They sing the whole game in support of their club. When I was in Indonesia in 2018, I saw 5,000 Arema FC club fans [basé dans la région de Malang] travel to Jakarta, more than 800 kilometers away.
In Malang (as in Surabaya), the club is everywhere in the street, especially with murals. There is also a district close to the city center which is completely painted in blue, the color of the Arema FC club.
On Saturday night, the tragedy unfolded after a match between two rival clubs. What was the context?
It is a regional derby, on the island of East Java, between Persebaya, the team from Surabaya, the second largest city in the country, and Arema FC, the team from Malang. You should know that Persebaya players arrived at Kanjuruhan Stadium in an armored police vehicle. Supporters threw stones at the vehicle. Even if there was no risk for the players to be touched, it illustrates the level of tension of this match.
Since 2006, supporters of both sides have been banned from traveling to the city of the rival club. There is such a tension that when the opposing supporters are not there, it is the players who are targeted. This is what we see on the images of the match [de samedi].
Is violence on the sidelines of football matches widespread in Indonesia?
Yes, violence is common. In August 2022, a supporter of PSS club Sleman was killed by supporters of rival club PSIM Yogyakarta. In June 2022, during a friendly match between Persib Bandung and Persebaya Surabaya, there were two deaths as a result of a stampede. Added to the violence are organizational problems. In twenty years, many clashes have left dozens dead.
You went to Kanjuruhan Stadium, where the drama took place. How would you describe it?
Indonesia is going to organize the next Under-20 Football World Cup in 2023. It is a country with a great mix, between very modern stadiums, like that of Persis Solo, in Manahan, or that of Persija Jakarta which has just been built, and stadiums which give the impression of having aged badly, such as the Kanjuruhan stadium, precisely, which has a capacity of 35,000 spectators [qui ne fait pas partie des stades sélectionnés pour accueillir la prochaine Coupe du monde des moins de 20 ans, NDLR].
In August 2018, I was in this stadium for the game between Arema and Persija Jakarta. It was a game without tension because the two camps of supporters are friends. On the other hand, there were several thousand more supporters that day than the capacity of the stadium. Kick-off was delayed by more than half an hour due to problems accessing the stands. I remember that the gates to the stadium were full.
According to one of my sources, on Saturday evening there would have been at least 42,000 spectators in the stadium, which is at least 7,000 more than the stadium’s capacity. To control people, there is no pre-filtering exercised by stewards, as is done in other stadiums.
How to explain the magnitude of yesterday’s tragedy?
Land invasions, like Saturday, are recurrent in Indonesia. On the images that we can see, the supporters confront the police, who do not really know how to react. The police then fire an incredible number of tear gas grenades towards the north bend. I think that’s the heart of the problem. We see on videos a cloud of tear gas in this gallery. One of the hypotheses is that the crowd wanted to flee from the gallery, that the exit doors were not wide open, which would have caused a bottleneck.
#BREAKING: At least 127 people killed, 180 injured in riot at football stadium in Indonesia, police say. #Indonesia https://t.co/jz14Lez9Zw
Added to this is the fact that the stadium is not in Malang, but in Kepanjen, 25 kilometers south of the city. Most of the wounded had to be transported to Malang.
Security around a football game is always extremely complex. However, police training is very limited in Indonesia. There is a need for real expertise to organize security around a football match. We saw this recently in France, where we could have had a tragedy in Stade de France [le soir de la finale de la Ligue des champions en mai 2022].