Months After Fatal Stadium Disaster, Indonesian Police Use Tear Gas on Football Fans Again

But the day before the scheduled match in Semarang city, and after tickets were already bought, authorities announced that the game would be played behind closed doors at Jatidiri Stadium to avoid possible violence. Still, Revino and hundreds of other PSIS Semarang supporters, some who had traveled from other cities, gathered outside the stadium to try their luck at getting inside. 

They were met with a group of riot police who had assembled at the front gates in anticipation of the crowd. As tensions spiked between the two sides, some fans started throwing stones and bottles; others tried to force their way into the stadium. Then came the tear gas.

The metallic tear gas canisters flew through the air, landing on the crowd. Within seconds, fans were fleeing the scene, trying to shield their faces from the stinging fumes.

“They chased us and fired tear gas non-stop until we reached the main road,” Revino told VICE World News. As they ran from police, he witnessed people gasping for air, some even falling to the ground and fainting. 

While Revino escaped largely unscathed, the chaos left him wondering if authorities had learned anything from Oct. 1, where an eerily similar incident led to one of the worst sporting disasters in history. Just a few months earlier, across the country in Malang province, 135 people, including children, died in a stampede after police fired 45 rounds of tear gas at spectators inside Kanjuruhan Stadium.

In the wake of the tragedy, Indonesian authorities vowed to step up efforts to improve football game safety. But this latest burst of violence contradicts all of that, experts say, raising questions about the state’s sincerity in rolling out reform. As Indonesia still grapples with what happened at Kanjuruhan Stadium months ago, this latest incident feels all too familiar for many football fans.

“It’s very unacceptable,” Revino said. “Can’t they see there were children and women too? Why did the police keep using tear gas after it was banned?”

But it’s not just the fans who are concerned. Experts on policing and football culture also say the response was dangerous and demonstrated a lack of concern for safety.

Jacqui Baker, a lecturer at Australia's Murdoch University who studies policing in Indonesia, said the chaos showed that “nothing has really changed.” 

“You would think with Indonesia having experienced the second largest football tragedy in world history… that issues around match security would have been thoroughly discussed,” she told VICE World News. “Instead they have blundered directly into another situation where police are using excessive force.”

Sitting at the center of the country’s most recent debate on police violence is the use of tear gas, a crowd control measure banned by the international soccer governing body FIFA. 

There’s no definite conclusion from authorities on what caused the majority of the deaths in October at Kanjuruhan Stadium. An official fact-finding team concluded in October that tear gas was the main cause of death, while Indonesia’s National Commission on Human Rights—known locally as Komnas HAM—identified tear gas as the key trigger for the crush that killed the majority of victims through asphyxiation.

What is clear, however, is the police have downplayed the role of tear gas during the disaster, instead blaming overcrowding for the casualties. Authorities also claimed that the canisters used at Kanjuruhan Stadium were expired and therefore had a reduced effect on the spectators.

But bereaved family members have expressed serious doubts about this narrative, with some even allowing the bodies of victims to be exhumed for autopsies to find, among other things, tear gas in their lungs.

Yuswanto Ardi, Semarang police deputy head, said the tear gas used last week was “carried out in accordance with the procedures for using force.” Additionally, Semarang Police Chief Irwan Anwar told reporters that the tear gas was fired in self-defense.  

Seven police officers suffered minor injuries in the confrontation, while several PSIS Semarang supporters received medical help after inhaling tear gas. According to local news reports, police are investigating at least 16 people for initiating the violence and clashing with the police. 

While no serious casualties were reported from the Jatidiri Stadium incident, Baker, the academic, said it indicates that Indonesian police continue to mete out violence against football fans.

“What is remarkable to me is just how poorly organized the [Jatidiri] match was,” Baker said. “At the last minute they tell supporters, who they know have a history of hooliganism, that they won't be able to watch the match. So in some ways, it's kind of set up to fail.”

“What happened at Jatidiri shows that there's been very little soul searching on the behalf of PSSI [the Football Association of Indonesia] and the police.” 

Wirya Adiwena, Amnesty International Indonesia’s deputy director, says that the sullied image of the police force at football games cannot be divorced from a longstanding problem with police brutality in other settings—from raids on ethnic minority communities to mass protests.

“This is tied up to a bigger picture of police impunity in Indonesia. Kanjuruhan was not the first time that the police excessively used their force that resulted in casualties and the violation of human rights,” he told VICE World News.

“This really begs the question: What else should happen until the police really pay closer attention to their internal conduct?”

In 2020, Amnesty International documented 43 incidents of police violence during mass protests against the Omnibus Bill, a controversial new law that many viewed as eroding workers’ rights. Researchers reported beatings of unarmed demonstrators with batons and sticks, and recorded police firing tear gas to disperse crowds. Separately, local human rights group KontraS documented at least 677 cases of police brutality from July 2021 to June 2022.

Authorities, however, have continued to point the blame at citizens.

Erick Thohir, Indonesia’s football association chief, also known as PSSI, announced on Sunday plans for a committee to tackle hooliganism.

“If we want to properly reform our soccer [culture], they must also take responsibility,” Erick said on Sunday, adding that football fans need to be involved in the sport’s transformation in the country.

But Andy Fuller, a post-doctoral research fellow in cultural anthropology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who studies Indonesian football fandom, says the stereotype is unfair and potentially dangerous.

“So-called ‘hooliganism’ is a result of mismanagement at the elite level of Indonesia’s footballing bureaucracy,” Fuller told VICE World News, adding that the PSSI has allowed a culture of corruption, most notably match-fixing, to run rampant.

“After decades of corruption and inaction, many fans despair at the state of their domestic leagues.”

This deep-seated resentment towards authorities is also exacerbated by an abrasive police presence looming over games, which has captured international attention since the Kanjuruhan stadium disaster. 

Now, five months on and in the wake of the Jatidiri incident, questions remain over what it would take for the authorities to roll out true reform.

“I think it is right that there are plenty of civil society organizations in Indonesia, as well as academics and observers, who question the police’s seriousness in learning from the tragedy in Kanjuruhan,” Wirya said.

“Questioning whether police really considered the tragedy as a moment of reflection, or if it’s something that they should just sweep under the rug.”

Annisa Nurul Aziza contributed reporting.

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