In the aftermath of one of the worst football tragedies – at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, which left 125 football fans dead and over 180 injured – I noted a number of comments on Twitter.
“Typical of Indonesian fans,” one said. “Indonesian fans have always been violent,” another added.
Such sentiments were rampant on social media.
The scenes were, of course, disgraceful. Looking at the pictures and videos (and talking to sources from Indonesia), it is possible that thousands of fans
were involved.
The episode shamed the game. But the comments were nevertheless misleading. For a stadium that holds a maximum of 38,000 people, there were
some 42,000 football supporters in the stadium that night.
Arema FC was going into the match with four wins from 10 previous league matches. They went into the second half after being locked in a 2-2 draw with Persebaya Surabaya, their long-standing rivals.
The visiting fans were not allowed to buy tickets to the game due to fears of violence. Less than 10 minutes into the second half, Sho Yamamoto scored the third goal for Persebaya Surabaya, which was the only goal scored at that half, and the goal that dashed the hopes of the 42,000 Arema fans. They were broken.
In any other sport, and indeed any other field of human activity, the sorry players would have received some sympathy. There would have been pats on the back and comforting hugs.
But instead, a few fans started yelling in anger, demanding an explanation for such a dreadful loss. Apparently, the thinking behind all that screaming is that if you want to make sure people succeed in the future, those people should be openly mocked, not praised.
Whether that approach works is another matter for a different article. The point is, that sort of thing happens all the time in football.
We saw plenty of that with the disdained Selangor fans this season. And I’ve had my share of daily insults and the occasional death threats from abusive football fans while at Perak.
I am just thankful that I had not been so devastated by those abusive spasms, and spiralled into a life of drugs and depression.
In the incident in Indonesia, we witnessed only a handful of fans climbing over the fence onto the pitch, rushing toward their players, demanding an explanation.
The hysterical and panicked response from security forces, led to approximately 3,000 enraged fans rushing onto the field. This then prompted the trigger-happy security forces to start using tear gas, a not-so-smart move that is in fact prohibited by Fifa.
According to Amnesty International, tear gas should only be used to disperse crowds when widespread violence had occurred, and when other methods had failed, and after people had been given prior warning of its use to allow the crowd to disperse voluntarily.
What we need to be reminded of is that fans, as heterogeneous as any social group, consist of the young and old, rich, and poor, intelligent, and the not-so-bright.
It is true that some clubs have a more serious problem with violence than others, but this doesn’t mean that the majority of fans, or even the average fan, deserve to be labelled violent or abusive.
Most are nothing of the sort. They’re just fickle and volatile to the herd mentality, which sometimes alters their bearings into performing bovine behaviours.
This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Twentytwo13.
