Locked gates at Indonesia stadium contributed to deadly stampede: soccer association

Most of the deaths occurred when riot police fired tear gas and caused fans at the Indonesia soccer stadium to make a panicked, chaotic run for the exits.

Delays in unlocking the gates at an Indonesian soccer stadium after violence broke out at the end of a match contributed to a disaster in which at least 131 people died, the national soccer association said Tuesday.

The Football Association of Indonesia said it has permanently banned the chief executive and security coordinator of the team that hosted Saturday’s match, Arema FC, for failing to secure the field and promptly issue a command to unlock the gates.

“The doors should have been open, but were closed,” said Erwin Tobing, chief of the association’s discipline commission.

Because of a lack of workers, only a few people were ordered to open the gates, and they had not yet reached some doors when spectators began rushing to escape tear gas fired by police in an attempt to control fans who had entered the field, association spokesperson Ahmad Riyadh said.

He said all gates should be unlocked 10 minutes before the end of a match. But on Saturday, seven minutes after the referee blew the final whistle, several doors were still locked, contributing to the toll in one of the world’s deadliest sporting disasters.

Police, however, continued to insist Tuesday that the gates were open but were too narrow and could only accommodate two people at a time when hundreds were trying to escape.

According to recommendations by FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation, exits at stadiums must be unlocked at all times during a game for safety purposes. Those rules don’t necessarily apply to domestic or national leagues but nevertheless are a safety standard, as is the recommendation against the use of tear gas as a crowd-control measure.

Photos from the Malang stadium showed four connecting door panels forming one gate. There were 14 gates in total.