The Indonesian stadium stampede that left 131 people dead has sparked anger at the nation’s police, whom critics have long accused of using excessive violence.
Police, who described the unrest on Saturday night as “riots,” said they tried to force supporters to return to the stands and fired tear gas after they invaded the pitch.
However, survivors — who described the police as wielding batons and firing tear gas at helpless spectators — accuse them of overreacting, which led to a crush that became one of the deadliest disasters in soccer history.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Indonesia’s police force has, with the military, been involved for decades in suppressing dissent, quelling riots, crushing radical Islamist groups and anchoring a bloody fight against separatists. The police force has grown in power as an institution used for the security of the state since the fall of Indonesia’s military dictatorship in the late 1990s.
Data reviewed by Agence France-Presse shows a force heavily armed and funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for tactical riot equipment since Indonesian President Joko Widodo came to power in 2014.
Spending on crowd control tactical gear — batons, tear gas, gas masks, shields and vehicles — has jumped in the past few years, according to figures collected by Andri Prasetiyo, a researcher at nongovernmental organization Trend Asia who analyzes government purchases.
They have spent close to US$250 million in less than a decade, he said, to kit out officers who use what experts say is often excessive force.
In 2014, the national police spent US$6 million on tear gas. This year, that figure rose to US$10 million. In the period between, it spent more than US$68 million on tear gas.
In the province of East Java, where the tragedy in the city of Malang occured, police spent US$3.2 million on batons in January alone.
“They use our tax money to kill us,” Prasetiyo said.
The nine elite officers suspended after the incident remain under investigation and come from a unit notorious for its aggressive crowd control tactics. All are commanders in the Mobile Brigade Corps, or Brimob, a unit that acts as the special operations paramilitary unit for the Indonesian police force.
Since the election of Widodo, they have been used to crush government opponents, activists say. Their coffers have since been heavily buffeted to militarize the force.
“In the past the most brutal force in the military were the special forces. I think they [Brimob] are now getting more notoriously known as a special force of the military,” Amnesty International Indonesia director Usman Hamid said.
Indonesia’s Commission for Disappeared and Victims of Violence, or Kontras, recorded 677 incidents of violence by police between July last year and June that left 59 people dead and 928 injured.
In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, such incidents spiked. In 2018 to 2019, Kontras recorded 643 cases of violence, while it recorded 921 cases the following year.
“The police feel like they are above the law and can do anything they deem necessary,” said Ardi Manto Adiputra, deputy director of human rights group Imparsial.
Many Indonesians fear this cycle of violence will never end without punishment for officers.
A key problem in bringing them to justice is little oversight inside or outside the force and close ties between the police and the government, Kontras coordinator Fatia Maulidiyanti said.
Experts say Widodo has helped place police allies in key positions after the force supported his most recent election bid, and the officers’ presence within the Indonesian elite is blurring the lines.
It means little action is taken against officers who commit alleged crimes, Maulidiyanti said.
“The sanctions against guilty officers are not fair or just. They are rarely brought to the criminal court,” she said.
Transparency International ranks the national police force as one of the most corrupt institutions in Indonesia.
Mochamad Iriawan, the president of Indonesia’s soccer association — which has refused to criticize the police for the stampede — is the former police chief of Jakarta.
The country’s intelligence chief was deputy of the national police force, and the head of the country’s anti-graft commission was chief of the national police’s security maintenance agency.
“If we don’t do something, I think Indonesia is going to become a police state,” Hamid said.
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
RSS