MALANG: Indonesia’s hopes of hosting world sports events in future will depend on the credibility of its investigation into the weekend’s football stadium disaster and safety reforms, analysts have warned.
The tragedy on Saturday in Malang left 125 people dead and more than 300 injured after police fired tear gas in a packed stadium to quell a pitch invasion by fans, triggering a stampede.
It was one of the deadliest disasters in the history of football.
Analysts said that while there have been similar tragedies in other countries – although rarely on such a scale – it will undoubtedly affect Indonesia’s reputation when it comes to hosting big international competitions.
It could not have come at a worse time – Indonesia has bid to replace China as hosts for next year’s Asian Cup football and a decision is due in two weeks.
The archipelago country of about 270 million people will also host the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in May.
There have been calls online for Indonesia to be stripped of the right to host.
Indonesia, which defied warnings about poor preparations to stage the Asian Games in 2018, has also expressed an interest in hosting an Olympics for the first time in 2036.
“It certainly tarnishes the reputation of the country and tarnishes the reputation of football there. They can’t escape that,” Los Angeles-based crowd management expert Paul Wertheimer said.
“But it is what they do now that will determine whether the reputation sticks or not – whether they can learn from this tragedy and produce standards of care that will impress the world,” said Wertheimer, who heads the consultancy Crowd Management Strategies.
“The first thing I thought was: why was tear gas being used?” he added, also highlighting overcrowding and failure in crowd management as among the possible missteps.
FIFA, football’s world governing body, prohibit the use of crowd control gas by police or stewards at pitch-side. — AFP
