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Soccer as the opium of the masses: The case of stadium tragedy
In a country where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, you can expect that most of those fans in the bleachers are from the working class.
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This picture taken on Oct. 1 shows tear gas released by police among people crowded in the stands after a football match between Arema FC and Persebaya at the Kanjuruhan stadium in Malang, East Java. (AFP/STR)
Before the kickoff between bitter rivals in Malang, East Java, on Oct. 1, no one expected Arema FC to concede their first loss in 23 years on their home turf to Persebaya Surabaya, not to mention accommodate the deadliest soccer match in the world for the past 58 years, with at least 125 people pronounced dead.
The worst soccer match of all time happened in Lima in 1964 when the police fired tear gas into the crowd in an attempt to stop Peruvian fans from running onto the field. Guess what? It did not work. It did not work and will never work.
FIFA, the highest global governing body of soccer, states that no “crowd-control gas” should be even carried, much less used, by the police at matches.
One day after the devastating incident in Malang, the entire nation mourned the death of the soccer fans. Messages of sympathy were offered by public and private institutions and even the most famous soccer clubs in the world. But is this enough? No soccer match is indeed equivalent to human lives, but we still have bigger fish to fry.
I am very much willing to debate anyone who says soccer is the reason why such violence occurs. Soccer is a beautiful sport, but police brutality is not. The very state character of Indonesia was on full display that Saturday night. What happened is beyond sports, but a reflection of the economic and political status of the entire Indonesian state apparatus.
It is a popular sentiment in the public sphere now that most soccer fans are described as barbaric and even hooligans. As enthusiastic as the public may now seem in calling names, I hope that they would also call for accountability for those state forces that ignored the protocol and were irresponsible for their actions.
