The World's Most Dangerous Football League

forgets about the thuggery of Turkish

Hooligans Argentina's brutal and

sometimes deadly Barra brother

supporters groups and the knife-worlding

gangsters who attach themselves to a

handful of clubs in Eastern Europe the

most dangerous place to be a football

fan is undoubtedly Indonesia between

1994 and 2022 at least 78 people were

killed in football-related violence in

Indonesia and just four months ago the

country was rocked by the deadliest

stadium disaster anywhere in the world

in more than 50 years a human Crush

caused by Riot police deploying tear gas

which then triggered a rush towards in

exit resulted in 135 people losing their

lives the youngest of them just three

years old meanwhile a further 583 people

were injured the fourth largest country

on Earth by population and the largest

in which football is the most popular

sport Indonesia is the most football

craze nation in Asia if not in the

entire world it's for that reason that

Indonesia has sometimes been dubbed as

the Brazil of Asia but they have been

unable to replicate anything like the

South American success despite being the

first Asian country to appear at a World

Cup having done so in 1938 as the Dutch

East Indies while still a part of the

Dutch Empire Indonesia hasn't qualified

for a single World Cup since then and is

currently ranked outside of the top 150

in the FIFA world rankings it makes

Indonesia arguably the single biggest

Underachievers in all of world football

and that lack of success owes to a whole

host of issues corruption is endemic to

Indonesia and football is no exception

from the government's National Sports

Committee to the pssi that oversees

Indonesian football corruption bribery

and match fixing runs right within the

sport and there are a few parties that

aren't in some way complicit the degree

of distrust and disdain in the pssi and

in the nation's top flight is so severe

that in 2011 the pssi's president was

allowed to remain in post despite

literally being convicted of corruption

so a rival League was founded in an

attempt to replace the former Top Flight

the lack of fairness and

unpredictability caused by corruption in

a league where supporters claim to often

know the result of a game before a ball

has even been kicked has added fuel to

the fire of the thuggish and violent

tendencies which have plagued Indonesian

football ever since the fall of the

country's military dictator General

suharto in 1998 but following the

kanjiran stadium disaster in Milan in

which 39 children were among the 135

killed how much more blood needs to be

shed before something is done well

that's what I wanted to find out so in

today's video join me on a journey to

Indonesia a country which has long been

plagued by conflict and where so much of

it now involves football fans as we take

a look at the country's incredible

fandom its more Insidious elements and

what the future might hold for a country

that is utterly obsessed with football

the enormous loss of life at the

kanjaran stadium in East Java four

months ago shocked the world but not

Indonesia football and death have long

gone hand in hand in Indonesia and

whilst the sheer number of casualties at

a single match was without precedent

those who followed Indonesian football

had long foreseen the events that

unfolded in the city of Malang earlier

last year the Jakarta International

stadium was inaugurated at a game

between its new occupants procedure

Jakarta and Thai chonbury FC the largest

football stadium in Indonesia now and

among the largest anywhere in the world

with a capacity of 82 000. the grand

opening did not pass without incidents

as the barrier separating the lower

level of the stands behind one of the

goals collapsed fortunately no one was

hurt but it was hardly reassuring that

such an incident could occur at

Indonesia state-of-the-art New Stadium

built at a cost of over 300 million

dollars and only opened in 2022. the

kanjaran stadium by contrast broke

ground in 1992 7 and opened in 2004

built at a cost of less than two million

dollars to become the new home of arima

FC though it is hardly ancient like so

many stadiums in Indonesia the kanjaran

stadium fell well short of modern

international safety standards the gates

at the 42

449 capacity stadium are only big enough

for two supporters to enter or exit

through at any one time another common

problem at stadiums in Indonesia often

resulting in hours long waits for

supporters to leave the stadium at the

end of well-attended matches as a result

the Stadium's capacity had supposedly

been reduced to 38 000 in recent years

but on October 1st 2022 arima faced

their bitter rivals persever

in the super East Java Derby there is a

genuine animosity between the cities of

Malang and Surabaya and their most

fanatical supporters groups known as

Aaron Mania and bonak for Supremacy in

the province of East Java both on and

indeed off the pitch for such a big game

in which tickets were always going to be

oversubscribed arima decided to rake in

a little bit more cash and sell an extra

4 000 taking the capacity back up to 42

000. for what is one of Indonesia's most

bitter rivalries among some first

competition the game's implementation

committee had advised that it kick off

at three o'clock earlier kickoffs a more

manageable and controllable for

organizers and security forces for a

variety of reasons as well as making it

easier for fans to get to and from the

stadium due to public transport grinding

tour holds on an evening however the

game's broadcasters indocia who are the

major broadcasters of Indonesian

football wanted the match to be played

at night early kickoffs might be better

for safety but night games rake in a

larger audience inevitably and with not

nearly enough opposition the

broadcasters got their wish per surveyor

Surabaya supporters were banned from

attending the game as a way fans often

are in Indonesia's Top Flight for safety

reasons but that didn't stop tempers

from flowering among the home supporters

when their team lost their game 3-2 at

the end of the match a pocket of incense

supporters entered the field of play

Percabeth surabaya's players had already

made haste but the police claimed that

the home fans had attacked their own

players and officials the police

responded by deploying tear gas which

caused thousands of fans most of whom

hadn't even invaded the pitch to rush

towards the Stadium's limited and narrow

exit some of which hadn't even been

opened in time in the bottleneck that

was created of the kind that we have

seen in previous Stadium disasters well

over a hundred supporters succumbed to

asphyxiation trampled their lungs filled

with tear gas and the air star part of

oxygen that fateful day has come to be

known as the kanjaran stadium disaster

but that's a bit of a misnomer a

disaster is defined as a sudden accident

or a natural catastrophe that causes

great damage or a loss of life but this

was no sudden accident or natural

catastrophe it was eminently avoidable

and several groups and individuals could

have but chose not to prevent something

exactly like this from happening despite

all of the warning signs and so many

deaths which preceded it it might be

far-fetched to describe what's happened

at the kanjaron stadium as murder it

seems improbable that anyone involved

wanted people to die but a great many

people have been disinterested in the

lives of football fans in Indonesia

resulting in the same consequences

Indonesia is a country which has in some

senses been shaped by violence and

unrest Europeans first arrived in the

archipelago in the early 1500s first the

Portuguese and then the British but it

was the Dutch who colonized the islands

establishing the Dutch East India

Company in 1602 followed by a formal

Colony known as the Dutch East Indies

from 1800. the Dutch occupation of

Indonesia was largely benevolent and

mutually beneficial which meant that it

faced very little opposition from

Indonesians nah I'm just kidding it was

a system of rampant exploitation like

all colonies and it required continuous

brutal repression by force in order to

maintain control there were a series of

revolts against colonial rule throughout

the 1800s from the Padre war in West

Sumatra at the beginning of the century

to the amban Revolt in saparua and the

Java war in well in Central Java the

bloodiest and most significance of all

though was the ache War which spanned

from

1873. up until almost the start of World

War One in the northernmost tip of the

Sumatra Island the lack of support for

the local sultanate by an already

weakening Ottoman Empire paved the way

for a Dutch Victory after 40 Years of

conflict but not without significant

cost over a hundred thousand troops were

killed in total almost 40 000 of them on

the Dutch side the number of deaths and

the brutal manner of the conflict both

through controversy in and significantly

weakened Netherlands and when the

Japanese invaded in 1941 as part of

their Pacific Campaign during World War

II they were able to occupy the islands

in just three months while sustaining

only minimal losses when World War II

ended and the Japanese surrendered

Indonesia declared independence but the

Dutch weren't willing to give up on the

archipelago without a fight the

Indonesian war of independence spanned

for four and a half years claiming the

lives of somewhere between 25 000 and

100 000 Indonesian lives and only ending

in Victory for the independence movement

after the United States threatened to

cut post-war Aid to the Netherlands

sadly that wouldn't be the end of

Bloodshed in Indonesia in fact by far

the worst was still to come Nationalist

and revolutionary leader sakano became

Indonesia's first president but after he

began to become a little too friendly

with the Soviets the CIA launched a

failed coup attempt in 1958. that didn't

quite work out but following another

attempted coup in 1965 this time blamed

on Communists sakano was indeed

overthrown replaced by Major General

suharto suharto LED Indonesia's armed

forces and following the failed coup of

1965 he orchestrated a mass killing

campaign described by some as a genocide

with support from the CIA and the

British intelligence services in which

somewhere between 500 000 and possibly

more than a million Indonesians were

slaughtered often in extremely barbaric

ways the majority of those killed were

either real or received Communists and

leftists but ethnic Chinese atheists

non-believers and others were also

targeted sowato was only forced to

resign in 1998 following Mass riots and

Nationwide unrest in response to the

economic Fallout of the Asian financial

crisis military defeat in East Timor and

government corruption suato's family's

reported net worth of 38 billion dollars

when he left office after 31 years which

was enough to make him the third richest

person in the world at the time is often

cited as an example of the scale of

corruption under Israel every one of

these violent and tumultuous flush

points and epochs has shaped Indonesian

football the Dutch introduced football

to the archipelago were the first

leagues and governing bodies being

established during the early 1900s

soretin sosra gondo who founded the

Football Association of Indonesia in

1930 but also known as the pssi was

himself a revolutionary who had been

educated at Harvard football became an

important symbol of Indonesian

nationalism with several players being

prominent figures within the

independence movement and the pssi came

into direct conflict with the

Netherlands East Indies Football

Association or nivb which later became

the Netherlands East Indies football

Union or nivu the nivb was established

in 1919 and the nivu in 1938 by the

Dutch to oversee football in the Dutch

East Indies and co-existed as a rival

organization to the pssi the Dutch East

Indies qualified automatically for the

1938 World Cup in Italy After Japan had

withdrawn from qualifying and suratan

wanted a game to be played between the

pssi and the nivu teams to determine

which team would represent the Dutch

East Indies at the World Cup the rich

flat out refused sending the nivu team

which had nine players of Chinese rather

than Indonesian Heritage and lost their

opening games 6-0 against a Hungarian

team that went on to reach the final

since the 1938 World Cup adopted a

straight knockout format the Rich East

Indies Remains the only team ever to

have played only one World Cup game

several major Indonesian clubs such as

persis solo and passive Bandung were

founded during the country's colonial

era including Indonesia's biggest and

most successful Club pasija Jakarta

which was originally named Woodville

Bond indonesic jakatra it is at this

point that I should apologize to

multiple countries and cultures for my

butchering of any and indeed quite

possibly all pronunciations in this

video although football was immediately

popular in Indonesia it wasn't all the

way until 1993 that the country's

semi-professional League known as

galatarma and its amateur competition or

per saracason combines to form a

nationwide professional League system it

was a huge moment in the history of

Indonesian football but it also took to

teams who had previously had a little

relationship dudes are playing in

different League structures and turned

them into huge Rivals super East Java

Rivals arima and persevere for example

the opponents for last year's kanjaran

stadium disaster didn't even play in the

same league systems until the 1990s

Indonesia is incredibly diverse there

are

1340 recognized ethnic groups over 700

different languages and some 18

110 Islands including the five main

islands where the majority of the

population lives the largest archipelago

in the world to form a single state

given its complex history and

demographics perhaps it's little wonder

that the country is somewhat fragmented

and struggles with sectarianism there's

no doubt that sectarianism spills over

into football and there were height

intentions and increased instances of

fun violence months as soon as

Indonesia's Nationwide League system was

established in 93. that was greatly

exacerbated at the end of the decade

though after suato was forced to resign

in 1998 when Indonesia opened up a bit

and began to consume more media from the

outside world given football's

popularity it's no surprise that

Indonesians became transfixed with

football overseas and particularly with

Syria which was at the height of its

success at the time inspired by the fun

culture and Ultras of the Italian game

persist solo and their vociferous

supporters group pasio Pate began to

adopt similar pyrotechnic and TFO

displays at their games it didn't take

long for other Indonesian clubs to

follow suits Indonesian supporters

didn't just imitate European fun culture

they expanded upon it bringing even more

noise color and vibrancy to their

displays than almost any European Club

whilst they took their tfos from area

the fashion sense of supporters groups

would seek inspiration from Britain's

casual culture and indeed still does

with Adidas trainers Ben Sherman shirts

and Fred Perry polos becoming the go-to

attire the most notorious fan groups

associated with almost all Indonesian

clubs tend to be more akin to militias

than your typical football hooligan

recruited at a young age and led by

commanders groups like Jack Mania the

fanatical supporters of the CJ Jakarta

undergo rigorous physical exercises and

combat training ready to engage in

street fights and terrorist violence at

almost every game they attend for some

it has become ingrained in their

matchday experience for others it was

never about the football at all the

atmosphere created by Indonesian

football fans is unlike anywhere else in

the world well orchestrated loud and

flamboyant the level of emotion is

overwhelming and seems to be almost

Transcendent for a lot of fans that is

exactly how it feels poverty is Rife in

Indonesia and for many life can be tough

it is among the most impoverished and

disenfranchised communities where

unemployment is highest the fanatical

and often violent supporters groups do

the bulk of their recruitments not

dissimilar to gangs in more ways than

one these groups offer people many of

whom are genuinely fanatical about

football a sense of community and

belonging a distraction and form of

escapism from the often fairly Bleak

reality of their day-to-day lives and a

feeling that they're part of something

bigger than themselves Andy Fuller of

Utrecht University who has written

extensively about Indonesian football on

his website reading sideways describes

the scourge of hooliganism in Indonesian

football as being cathartic violence

enabling an oppressed underclass to

regain a sense of self-worth and control

over their own lives of course their

legitimate anger around their own

circumstances lack of opportunities and

the corruption that plagues Indonesia is

perfectly legitimate but they are

punching sideways quite literally in

some cases by directing that anger a

fellow impoverished football fans it's

also because of the social status of

those involved in the supporters groups

which tend to be the most prone to

violence combined with how commonplace

and unremarkable that violence has

become that Indonesia's media now barely

reports on violence involving football

fans except for in the most shocking of

instances one such case which made

International headlines was the killing

of 23 year old procedure Jakarta

supporter and recent jackmania recruits

haringa salern in September 2018. sirlo

had made the journey from Jakarta to

Bandung for a game between Presidio and

percib despite the way fans having been

banned from attending the game for years

now due to security concerns when he was

identified as a jackmania member a group

of person fans beat and kicked him to

death before parading his body what made

the case so shocking was not the death

of a 23 year old a young person Bandung

fan had been killed in the same fixture

the previous season but that the

incident had been caught on camera

recorded on a smartphone the outcry and

international attention prompted big

promises but in reality once again very

little changed 14 person fans were

arrested as suspects half of the miners

and the two charged with killing Salah

as 16 and 17 year old were both miners

as well the league was suspended for two

weeks in response to the incident but

systemic change wouldn't be forthcoming

there is a cycle of passing on the blame

in Indonesia every time someone gets

hurt or killed the government blamed the

footballing authorities pssi say that

it's the police's fault and the police

themselves can often seem disinterested

if not outright the cause of a lot of

the problems not just at the kanjaran

stadium but in general accused of

deploying a hit first ask questions

later policy of assuming the guilt of

football fans and even of beating a 16

year old fan to death in 2016. the 18

police officers equipped with tegas at

the kanjaran stadium on October 1st were

put under investigation and three later

faced criminal charges

in the aftermath of the kanjaran stadium

disaster FIFA president Gianni Infantino

flew to Indonesia claiming to be

offering support in light of one of

football's darkest days and Keen to

offer assurances that Indonesia would

not be stripped of 2023 FIFA under 20

World Cup hosting rights as some had

fared FIFA and the pssi two

organizations that have been dogged by

alleged and indeed proven cases of

corruption thought it appropriate to

have a kick about at the Madia stadium

in Jakarta and upload a series of

photographs of Infantino and pssi

chairman Mohammed irawan laughing

smiling and embracing one another at

almost the exact same time the 135th

victim of the crush took his last

breaths in a hospital 400 miles away in

Milan Infantino never even visited

milang or the kanjaran stadium to see

the site of the disaster what had gone

wrong and how the disaster had been

allowed to happen in fact he never left

the capital city of Jakarta he did meet

with Indonesia's president Joko Widodo

gifting him a Qatar 2022 World Cup ball

and they read Indonesia shirt with his

nickname on the back as well as finding

the time to give a big thumbs up pose

whilst wearing a pssi bucket hat tone

death doesn't quite do it justice

Infantino and Widodo announced that the

kanjaran stadium would be demolished and

rebuilt to bring it up to line with

modern safety standards though nothing

was said of why it wasn't in the first

place or of how such a catastrophic

event had been allowed to unfold at the

time an independent investigation

commissioned by the Indonesian

government had determined that the pssi

chairman Vice chairman and the entire

executive committee

ought to resign but FIFA and Infantino

offered pssi their full support which

pssi staff and management then used as a

vote of confidence against the

independence investigation to justify

them remaining in office it wasn't the

first time that FIFA and the Indonesian

governments had come into direct

conflict back in May 2015 at an

executive committee meeting FIFA decided

to suspend the pssi with immediate

effect which meant that Indonesian sides

would no longer be able to compete in

International Football the timing of

that decision meant that Indonesia would

be suspended from qualifying for the

2018 World Cup in Russia it was a

decision taken by FIFA as a consequence

of what it believed to be government's

overreach into football matters which

also been the jurisdiction of pssi it

was the culmination of a chaotic

four-year period for Indonesian football

even by its believe me very high

standards in 2011 pssi chairman nerdin

Halid was convicted of corruption and

sentenced to prison but somehow managed

to hold on to his position within

Indonesia's Football Association owing

to his political connections there was

understandable outrage in Indonesia and

FIFA eventually had to step in and bar

Halid from standing in the next election

in the meantime the issp effectively

split and a new league was founded the

Indonesian Premier League which was

recognized as being the Top Flight of

Indonesian football from 2011 through to

2013 but ran alongside the pre-existing

Indonesian Super League which continued

throughout that period it was a total

mess symptomatic of the disarray that

Indonesian football was in and when the

leagues were unified in 2013 boppy the

Indonesian government's governing body 4

sport didn't want two of the teams who

had previously broken away to compete

owing to their ownership status it was

that interference that it irritated FIFA

who said that it was a matter for the

issp and then readmitted the issp a year

later after they'd got their own way if

you were extremely cynical about things

you might suggest that FIFA presidents

like Infantino were only interested in

endearing himself to the heads of

football associations like Indonesia

however corrupt they may be because it

is precisely those people who get to

vote in FIFA presidential elections no

no no no far be it from me to suggest

something like that there is certainly

no evidence of it and it's not something

that is predecessor pioneered on an

industrial scale before getting banned

in 2015 as part of a corruption case

don't be fooled into thinking that the

Indonesian governments are the good guys

in any of this though since that really

couldn't be any further from the truth

at virtually every turn they have

displayed an ambivalence towards the

safety welfare and life of football fans

and the fact that a football imagination

of 275 million people ranks below Hong

Kong and the Solomon Islands in the FIFA

world rankings is a reflection of how

poorly the game has been managed at

every level on the pitch prior to the

kanjaran stadium disaster there had been

signs of progress but they were knocked

out of the AFF Championship a tournament

they have still somehow never won over

two legs against Vietnam in their most

recent fixtures You could argue that a

government like Indonesia's has bigger

fish to fry than football but that

argument only holds up for so long

football is such an enormous part of

tens of millions of Indonesians lives 52

2 million Indonesians watch at least one

game of football a week and the violence

and mismanagement of the sport has been

on such an enormous scale for such a

long time now that the disinterest in

doing anything about it is quite frankly

unforgivable the big project that is

currently occupying Indonesia's

governments and politicians is the

relocation of the nation's capital from

Jakarta to a brand new city named new

Centerra which is being built on the

island of Borneo that project is

expected to cost the government 32

billion dollars meanwhile 40 billion

dollars is being spent in an attempt to

stop the nation's current capital

Jakarta from sinking into the sea

opinion is split in Indonesia in regards

to both projects though no one doubts

that certain individuals will do

exceptionally well out of government

contracts regardless of the outcome but

if the Indonesian government can find

over 30 billion dollars for a new city

see how much would it really cost to

make football safe in Indonesia a

downside less than that one would have

to imagine given the overall state of

football in Indonesia that I have just

described and the lack of will to

implement any solutions it ought to

promote laughter that there is talk of

the country hosting the World Cup but

with FIFA and the pssi I suppose why the

hell not the scale of corruption and

match fixing in Indonesia which fans

often claim leaves them knowing the

outcome of a game before a ball has been

kicked is so extreme that in 2017 the

rebranded Liga 1 Indonesia's Top Flight

promised to import foreign referees to

officiate the League's fixtures since

domestic ones could no longer be trusted

two weeks before the season began the

pssi canceled those plans only for there

to be so many controversial decisions on

the opening day of the season and such

uproar among supporters that they were

forced to U-turn a on their U-turn

officials were brought in from Australia

Kyrgyzstan Iran and Japan but the

project was scrapped again ahead of The

Following season in November 2021 match

fixing whistleblower Tsar Ecker

wallendari was injured in a hit-and-run

incident along with her husband on route

to give an interview with the police

tomorrow February 16th there is due to

be an extraordinary Congress to replace

the pssi president and the entire

executive committee a long overdue major

overhaul in response to last year's

stadium disaster following the disaster

all three professional football leagues

in Indonesia were suspended restarted on

December 5th with all remaining matches

for the first half of the season to be

played behind closed doors and a

recommendation that all future fixtures

kick off no later than five o'clock

radical reform is what has been promised

but we have been here before and people

are unlikely to believe leave it until

they say it Indonesian football has

something very special a passion for the

sport and football culture that would be

the Envy of most of the world

unfortunately that passion is marred by

corruption mismanagement incompetence

greed extremists and violent thugs it is

possible to remove the latter which is a

cancer without spoiling the former and

actually whilst enhancing it but there

has to be the will to do that from the

top down and from the bottom up until

now that hasn't been the case for the

sake of football and for the sake of

Indonesia hopefully one day that will

change

that is it for today's video but thank

you all very much as ever for watching I

don't know about anyone else but I knew

very little about Indonesian football

reformer researching this video other

than an Australian documentary that I

watched a few years back

um which is odd given that it has such

an enormous footballing culture and uh

and the rest of it so yeah hopefully you

found this Illuminating hit the like

button if that was the case let me know

your thoughts Down Below in the comments

especially if you are Indonesian I think

that you are a fairly sizable contingent

of the audience of the channel anyway so

uh yeah and make sure as always that you

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