By Chris Barrett and Karuni Rompies
Singapore/Jakarta: Police officers and football and security officials have been taken into custody in Indonesia on charges of negligence as the death toll from one of the world’s worst sporting disasters rose to 135.
Police have been blamed for triggering the Kanjuruhan Stadium tragedy on October 1 after responding with force to fans of home team Arema FC storming the pitch following their defeat to East Java rivals Persebaya Surabaya.
People peer inside a gate at Kanjuruhan Stadium, the site of this month’s deadly stampede. The venue will be demolished and rebuilt, Indonesia President Joko Widodo has announced.Credit: AP
Spectators suffocated and were trampled to death as they attempted to flee from tear gas fired by police into the grandstands and outside the venue, with hundreds trapped at exit gates that were locked or too small to accommodate the rush.
Now, as Indonesia President Joko Widodo bids to rehabilitate the country’s shattered football reputation by staging next year’s FIFA Under-20 World Cup, those fingered with responsibility for the horrific events in Malang are facing criminal charges.
Three police commanders who allowed or ordered the deployment of tear gas and three other officials who had oversight of the top-division match and its security arrangements were detained in East Java on Monday night. They included Akhmad Hadian Lukita, the director of league organiser PT LIB, and the head of Arema’s match committee.
Indonesian national police said they were finalising cases against the six to file to the prosecutor’s office. If found guilty they could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
The police investigation has run parallel to a probe by a fact-finding team commissioned by Widodo, known as Jokowi, which includes members of multiple government departments and football experts.
The taskforce, headed by Security Minister Mahfud MD, determined that the indiscriminate use of tear gas was the primary cause for the deadly incident, in which two police officers also lost their lives.
Football officials have also come under major scrutiny for their handling of the match, which was attended by 42,000 people despite the stadium’s 36,000 capacity.
Supporters from visiting team Persebaya Surabaya were barred from the game over concerns about violence breaking out with fans of Arema. But a member of the fact-finding group told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in the days after the tragedy that competition organisers had rejected a request from local police for the match to be held in the late afternoon and not at night for security reasons.
Akmal Marhali, who heads Indonesian football watchdog Save Our Soccer, said police had told football officials that crowd issues would be easier to respond to in that timeslot and that officers would not be as “tired, psychologically speaking”. The request was turned down to satisfy television broadcasters.
Three police commanders have been detained over the firing of tear gas at the stadium.Credit: AP
Pressure has since intensified on the leadership of Indonesian football’s governing body, the PSSI, to stand down.
“Six suspects are not enough. There should be more suspects such as from PSSI because we have football matches due to PSSI, it is the one which issues the regulations,” Marhali said on Tuesday.
“This is the most responsible organisation for this case.”
Mahfud has said the government cannot intervene and sack the association’s executive committee but its members had a “moral responsibility” to resign.
Widodo last week announced the stadium in Malang would be demolished and rebuilt to FIFA standards.
Hosting FIFA president Gianni Infantino in Indonesia, he vowed to improve safety for supporters in the football-obsessed south-east Asian nation and to press on with staging next year’s youth World Cup.
“We agreed that this tragedy is a very important lesson for Indonesian football and also for the world,” Widodo said last week.
Forty-three children were among those killed in the crush, which also left 580 people injured.
Farzah Dwi Kurniawan, a 20-year-old Arema fan and civil engineering student, became the 135th casualty of the disaster when he died at Malang’s Saiful Anwar Hospital on Sunday night. Two other patients, aged 17 and 33, were still being treated, the hospital said.
With AP
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