Surabaya resident Lena Damayanti said that if the local team, Persebaya, played a home game, she would go earlier than usual to pick up her daughter from school and kill time at a shopping mall until after the match had ended.

“I’m traumatized by soccer fans. They once banged up my car and scratched the paintwork with a nail,” she told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

“The cops couldn’t do anything because there were so many of these hooligans. I don’t want them ever disturbing my daughter.”

Lena’s concern is shared by many in the wake of recent rowdiness by a group of Persebaya supporters, known locally as bonek after their habit of heading off to their team’s games without enough money to get in.

Their unruly behavior, in which they extort or force their way into the stadium without paying, has left national railway operator PT Kereta Api (KA) and match organizers with hefty financial losses following Persebaya’s 4-2 away loss to Persib Bandung.

Match organizers have lost a reported Rp 105 million from gate receipts, after the visiting fans stormed their way into the stadium without paying.

KA spokesman Bambang Setyo Prayitno said Monday in Bandung that around 4,500 Persebaya fans had gone to Saturday’s match by riding the train from Surabaya — without paying the Rp 38,000 fare.

On their way to Bandung, the fans had hurled rocks at residents of the Central Java town of Surakarta.

This, however, would backfire, as on the return journey to Surabaya, they were roundly stoned by angry Surakarta residents.

Bambang said the fans had been transported home in two batches, the first 2,500 setting out at 1:47 a.m. Sunday on so-called “extraordinary coaches”, and the remaining 2,000 following at 7:10 a.m. on the Pasundan line.

He added the Surakarta residents had hurled rocks at all trains coming from Bandung.

“The damage was mostly to the windows and seats,” he said, adding it amounted to around Rp 150 million.

“They were waiting for the Persebaya fans to pass, and so they stoned all the trains from Bandung.”

One fan, Arie Sulistyo, 18, died after falling off the top of the train, Antara reported.

Even in Surabaya, the Persebaya fans are despised by most residents, who associate them with nothing but hooliganism.

Fatchul Alam, a journalist at the local Surya daily newspaper, said he had been injured and had his motorcycle and mobile phone stolen by a Persebaya fan during an away game to Gresik United at the Petrokimia Stadium in neighboring Gresik last May.

Another Surabaya resident, Haryadi, said he had once had an altercation with a man wearing Persebaya colors, who was causing a nuisance on the street.

“When the cops interrogated him, he said the jersey, which he’d bought for Rp 10,000, had riled him up, and he was ‘using the soccer frenzy’ to extort money from passersby,” he said.

“He didn’t actually watch the game.”

The prospects of violence on match day have deterred Sukamto from ever going to the stadium again.

“I bought a ticket to a match two years ago, but the fans were brutal,” he said.

“They threw rocks, my motorcycle damaging.”

Bambang said KA had billed Persebaya and the Surabaya administration for the damage to the company’s trains, but had been turned down.

“The fans were the victims inside the train,” Surabaya Mayor Bambang Dwi Hartono claimed.

“If KA wants to blame someone, go after the people who stoned the trains.”

The frequent hooliganism associated with the country’s soccer fans has been partly blamed on the lenient stance taken up by the Indonesian Soccer Association (PSSI), which is also under fire for the woeful performances by the national team.

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