Commentary: Can Indonesia get rid of its football hooligan culture?

PARIS: Football is something that unites us as human beings, there are hundreds of millions of people around the world who love to watch, play, and talk about it. Hence, when a tragedy such as that at Indonesia’s Kanjuruhan Stadium occurs, it is not only deeply tragic but also affects anyone who cares about the sport.

Sadly, as much as football unites it also has the capacity to divide, sometimes bitterly and violently so.

Saturday’s events were the outcome of a fierce rivalry between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya, although it wasn’t the first time that either football or Indonesia has been embroiled in such a horrific episode.

In 1964, more than 300 people died and 500 were injured at a football match in Lima, Peru. In 2001, 126 people were killed and hundreds injured at a game in Accra, Ghana. Significantly, in both cases it was the firing of tear gas in response to crowd unrest that became part of a chain of events that ultimately led to so many deaths.

This does not excuse hooliganism or football-related violence, in fact analyses of all manner of disasters identify that a multitude of factors typically lead to large numbers of casualties, be that at a football match or anywhere else. Indeed, the next step for the Indonesian government will be for it to identify the causes and effects leading up to last weekend’s shocking scenes.

Earlier this year in Paris, events at the UEFA Champions League between Liverpool and Real Madrid showed that deploying chemicals either to regulate crowd flow or to disperse crowds is never a good idea, especially when there are so many people in close proximity.

Though unlike in Paris, certain sections of the crowd in Indonesia clearly went to the match willing to perpetrate violence.

As part