“They were war scenes. We saw people die in the locker room.” This is how the moments of terror at the Kanjuruhan stadium are defined by Brazilian goalkeeper Adilson dos Santos, who plays for the Arema club in Indonesia and has witnessed the tragedy that took the lives of at least 125 people on Saturday.
“It was a real battlefield, it was war scenes. It looked like the war between Ukraine and Russia and not a football field. There was only chaos and panic”, summarizes the player with shock in a telephone interview with Efe, granted from the Indonesian city of Malang -which on Saturday was the scene of one of the worst tragedies in the history of football.
The spiral of violence began when some 3 000 fans of the host team, Arema, stormed onto the pitch after a 2-3 loss to hometown rival Persebaya Surabaya and clashed with security forces, who responded with tear gas canisters, sending the spectators into panic.
“They began to bring some of the most seriously injured to the interior of the locker room. We saw people dying, I went into complete despair“, recalls Santos on the island of Java.
As soon as the final whistle sounded, when the confusion began, the players, members of the technical commission and referees After the game they quickly went to the locker room, where they were confined for about five hours until the situation was under control.
“At first we only heard the noise of the (tear gas) bombs, of the hitting, screaming, crying and people breaking everything. But then they began to bring in the wounded, some already dead. Many were blue from lack of oxygen and were dying in front of us”, he recalls.
The tragedy reached its apex when the fans “killed one of the policemen”, which led to a “hard response” from the agents, who launched tear gas bombs against the crowd and caused an uncontrolled stampede that has left at least 125 dead, including 17 minors, and more than three hundred wounded.
“Suddenly, a cloud of that toxic smoke took over the whole place. And that’s where chaos broke out. Many people fell, passed out, were trampled, inhaled all that smoke,” says Santos.
“We had nowhere to run, we were waiting for the moment when (the fans) would come for us. They were the worst hours of my life”, adds the soccer player, a native of the southern state of Paraná and who, to his 32 years, defending the Indonesian club for almost two.
When they were finally able to leave the locker room safely, albeit under escort, the players found themselves in a “brutal scene of total chaos”.
“We went out and saw the entire stadium damaged, people covered in blood, others in ‘shock’, others choking intoxicated. There were many wounded, bodies dumped, cars burned. I just wanted to get out alive”, Santos clarifies.
The images of the serious disturbances that occurred in the Kanjuruhan stadium went around the world and generated a wave of global commotion, as well as calls against violence on the sport.
Likewise, witnesses and survivors have denounced the excessive use of force by the police, for which the Indonesian government announced an independent investigation on Monday to investigate the alleged brutality of the security agents.
The authorities also announced a series of measures to evaluate the rules for holding football matches and intensify security in the country’s stadiums, known for the strong rivalry between clubs and where outbreaks of violence do not They are isolated cases.
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