Wir bauen unsere Seite für dich um. Klicke hier für mehr Informationen.

Seite 5: A.C.A.B.

It’s absurd the aut­ho­ri­ties moved this game to a so-called neu­tral venue in Sura­karta – they already banned away fans at matches bet­ween Per­sija and Persib years ago. The pro­blem now is that Persija’s sta­dium is closed for reno­va­tions ahead of the Asian Games. The team have been playing home games in Bekasi, on Jakarta’s out­skirts – but already in West Java, Persib country. The police have shunted the derby pro­blem to someone else – crea­ting this convoy and all that goes with it. A sui­cide mis­sion.

Psst,” hisses one of the guys. Adjap!” He sneeks up behind one of the poli­ceman then reveals a sti­cker with A.C.A.B” embla­zoned on it. Even Rifki, the boy in the wind­breaker, breaks into a big smile. As if this whole trip were a game, like Batt­le­ships on the motorway. One ship’s hit, but the rest of the fleet is good to go. Persib are weak and we are strong!” says Rifki, as the convoy gets moving again. Out­side the bus, the lights from Ame­rican fast food restau­rants fly by, as if from a distant uni­verse, ano­ther life­time. McDonald’s, Ken­tucky Fried Chi­cken and so on and so on. You and I are gonna live forever.

Why such dis­re­gard for human life?

Until now, there’s been little public debate about foot­ball vio­lence in Indo­nesia. Eight years ago, a film did come out that touched on the sub­ject – Romeo Juliet, a love story bet­ween a Per­sija sup­porter and a female Persib fan. The director wanted to show that the two sides could get on. But some fans were outraged, clai­ming the plot was pure fan­tasy. Beyond that, the Indo­ne­sian maga­zine Tempo occa­sio­nally reports on fan cul­ture in a know­led­geable, inves­ti­ga­tive way. A few months ago, the Guar­dian ran a trans­la­tion of a Tempo story under the head­line Jakarta’s Hoo­ligan Pro­blem”. It was the first time the topic had been covered exten­si­vely in a major wes­tern news outlet.

Apart from that, it’s down to lone cam­pai­gners with little to no lob­bying power to try and change the situa­tion. That includes jour­na­list Akmal Mar­hali and former offi­cial Llano Mahar­dika. A couple of years ago, they formed the orga­ni­sa­tion Save our soccer” (SOS), to get some kind of moni­to­ring system off the ground. With the help of num­e­rous vol­un­teers, they have shone a light on the game in Indo­nesia, kee­ping a tally of the riots, the deaths. A day before my depar­ture for Sura­karta, I meet them in a café in cen­tral Jakarta. Mar­hali, 38, is wea­ring beige trou­sers, a black shirt and a deter­mined look. He’s brought a stack of docu­ments with him. He leans closer when we speak, as if he’s scared someone will listen in. 65 deaths!” he says and lets the number hang in the hot air.

65 deaths in Indo­ne­sian foot­ball since 1995, each one cata­logued by him and his vol­un­teers. In 2017 alone, they recorded 11 foot­ball-related deaths. The real number could be even higher. Mar­hali shows me a graph showing how each of the vic­tims died: pun­ches and kicks (24), stab wounds (14), others fell from moving buses, were hit by fire­works or shot. One guy was beaten to death because he failed to cele­brate a Per­sija goal with enough enthu­siasm. The Per­sija fans around him assumed he was a Persib sup­porter who had snuck into the home end. But where does this rage come from? Why such dis­re­gard for human life?

20171103 11 FREUNDE ID PERSIJA 0001 RZ Kopie
Muhammad Fadli

The clues all point towards the past and the decades of dic­ta­tor­ship under Suharto. Some of the men who mas­sacred over a mil­lion com­mu­nists in the mid-six­ties are still alive today – and are treated as heroes. They speak publicly and in grue­some detail about the mur­ders they com­mitted. They talk about the heads that rolled, the penises they cut off, and do it with a smile. But Indonesia’s fasci­na­tion with the extreme also has some­thing to do with the post-Suharto years, the period after 1998. Then, the country’s regions and cities took on more poli­tical signi­fi­cance and a strong sense of local patrio­tism emerged. That country was under­going a rude awa­ke­ning. Punks walked Jakarta’s streets, art gal­le­ries were ope­ning, news­pa­pers printed cri­tical articles and even if foot­ball sta­diums had always pro­vided more freedom than else­where, sud­denly you could sing, shout and swear like never before. Above all, you could fight. At the same time, the internet was taking off and showing young Indo­ne­sians, what they’d been missing all these years. All of a sudden, the world didn’t seem so big – even Indo­nesia with its 17,504 islands seemed orderly and easy to get a handle on. You just had to click on the right links.

Who can young people here trust? Where are the role models for them?”

Today, the country has a demo­cratic govern­ment but, says Mar­hali, that doesn’t mean ever­y­thing is clean and above board. That’s espe­ci­ally true in foot­ball, where the people in charge were once decision-makers in the Suharto regime. Who can young people here trust? Where are the role models for them?” asks Mar­hali, before embar­king on a half-hour lec­ture about offi­cials who make Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner and co sound like boy scouts. He tells me about cor­rupt com­pa­nies, who own four or five first-divi­sion teams at the same time, an open goal for bet­ting syn­di­cates from Sin­ga­pore and Malaysia.

He pulls out his phone and shows me secret recor­dings made by him and his col­le­agues. In one of them, a brief­case of money swaps hands for a match to be can­celled. He tells me about Nurdin Halid, the former foot­ball asso­cia­tion pre­si­dent who spent two of his eight years in power in prison for tax offences. Mas­sive fan pro­tests broke out in 2011 when he stood for re-elec­tion. Oil bil­lionaire Arifin Pani­goro used the inci­dent to set up an illegal second league. He bought up all the teams in it or founded new ones. After that, 15 teams played in the national first divi­sion. Ano­ther 19 played in the par­allel, illegal Super League”. This is Indo­nesia!

In such a maze of mad­ness, the issue of fan vio­lence barely raises an eye­brow with govern­ment or the foot­ball aut­ho­ri­ties. There’s always some­thing more important going on. In late May 2012, Islamic hard­li­ners stopped Lady Gaga from per­forming in Indo­nesia. At roughly the same time, three Persib fans were killed at the Cla­sico. Fans and vio­lence aren’t part of our remit,” the country’s foot­ball asso­cia­tion, the PSSI, would announce in 2016. The PSSI’s new general secre­tary, Ratu Tisha Destria, has none­theless pro­mised a more modern approach. She wants to set up a depart­ment for fan issues.

New begin­ning

Mar­hali is scep­tical. He flicks through a back issue of 11 Freunde. His eyes settle on an image of Bayern fans kettled by police. We need some­thing similar here,” he says. Secu­rity checks at sta­diums, better infra­struc­ture, cameras, a pro­fes­sional ticke­ting system, Euro­pean offi­cials.” In a matter of moments, Mar­hali has laid out a mini law and order pro­gramme. Per­haps it’s a sign of his frus­tra­tion. Is an iron fist really the only way to solve the pro­blem? Mar­hali thinks for a moment. He would prefer, he says, a lighter touch. Do you know what would be good?” he says, his eyes lighting up. If we could just let foot­ball die for a few years. Just one or two. Then we could build it back up from scratch.” He would also like to orga­nise a benefit tour­na­ment for all the vic­tims of foot­ball vio­lence. Every club would take part and pic­tures of the dead would be hung around the sta­dium. We would make them visible,” he says. That way, fans would have to talk to each other about them.” He pauses. You know what the foot­ball asso­cia­tion says about that? Mr. Mar­hali, that’s not a good idea.’”