
Though unlike in Paris, certain sections of the crowd in Indonesia clearly went to the match willing to perpetrate violence. 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.Įarlier 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. 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. This does not excuse hooliganism or football-related violence. 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. In 2001, 126 people were killed and hundreds injured at a game in Accra, Ghana. In 1964, more than 300 people died and 500 were injured at a football match in Lima, Peru.
