Indonesian Families Mark Year Since Football Disaster

The Indonesian families of those who died in the Kanjuruhan Stadium disaster in Malang a year ago have marked the anniversary of the tragedy along with hundreds of fans and survivors at a candlelit vigil at the stadium amid renewed calls for justice.

About 300 people travelled by convoy from the centre of Malang to Kanjuruhan Stadium, with some venturing inside for the first time since last year’s disaster when 135 people were killed, including children as young as three years old.

More than 400 people were injured.

Rini Hanifa, however, could not bring herself to enter the place where her 20-year-old son, Agus Rian Syah Pratama Putra, had died.

“Some of the victim’s families, including me, couldn’t stand it and some people fainted. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe,” she told Al Jazeera.

The prayer vigil started at 12pm on Sunday and carried on late into the night. The sense of injustice was palpable as parts of the stadium – now in the process of being rebuilt to FIFA specifications – were set alight and flames blazed across the pitch.

For Hanifa, however, the experience of being at Kanjuruhan was overwhelming. She went home early.

“I just stood outside gate 13 and thought about how my child must have felt as he struggled to breathe and couldn’t because of the tear gas,” she said.

“We were all just imagining how our children died in there, screaming for help because their lungs were burning.”The tragedy occurred when Indonesian police fired tear gas into the stands and onto the pitch after a game between local rivals Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya. Police thought there had been a pitch invasion by Arema fans, some of whom had climbed down onto the field after their team lost to Persebaya for the first time in 23 years.

JAZEERA