The Indonesian authorities raised this Wednesday to 131 the number of dead from the stampede that occurred in a soccer stadium on the island of Java, while the injured exceed 400 people.
The deputy governor of the province of East Java, Emil Dardak, where the tragedy occurred, indicated in a message posted on Twitter that six fatalities were taken directly to their relatives and therefore were not in the official registry.
The tragedy, the most serious in the history of the country’s soccer and one of the deadliest in that sport in the world, occurred on Saturday night, when thousands of fans of the Arema club stormed the field of play at the Kanjuruhan stadium, in the city of Malang, after a 2-3 loss to Persebaya Surabaya.
Supporters clashed with the police, who responded with violence and fired tear gas canisters into the stands, causing fans to flee en masse towards the gates of the sports venue.
Many of the exits were blocked, which caused riots and death by suffocation, trauma, or trampled most of the victims, according to hospital sources and witnesses.
The authorities, who have suspended ten police officers and are investigating around two dozen, have opened an internal procedure to review the actions of the security forces and assured that the law will be enforced “against anyone found guilty.”
In this context, the Indonesian National Police Commission (Kompolnas), linked to the Government and responsible for monitoring and advising the police forces, indicated that, according to preliminary investigations, “there were no instructions” from the Malang Police Chief to disperse the crowd with excessive measures, such as tear gas, the use of which in stadiums is prohibited by FIFA.
“That means that, in the field, there were (agents) who did not comply with the instructions. That is why the temporary decision of the head of the National Police to remove the chief of the (local) Police from the post, ”the Kompolnas commissioner, Albertus Wahyurudanto, said the day before at a press conference, although he did not specify the reasons why the agents They carried the gas canisters.
In addition to the Malang Police Chief, Ferli Hidayat, nine officers have been temporarily removed from their positions while investigations also affect another 20 police officers for their actions in Saturday’s incidents, whose images of terror went around the world. .
