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      Report Details ‘Systemic’ Abuse of Players in Women’s Soccer

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      A yearlong investigation found U.S. Soccer executives, N.W.S.L. owners and coaches at all levels of American soccer had turned a blind eye toward years of reports of abuse from players.One coach called in a player to review game film and showed her pornography instead. Another was notorious at the highest levels of women’s soccer for alternately berating his players and then quizzing them about their sex lives.A third coach coerced multiple players into sexual relationships, behavior that one top team found so disturbing that it fired him. But when he was hired by a rival team only a few months later, the original club, which had documented his behavior in an internal investigation, said nothing. Instead, it publicly wished him well in his new post.Those details and others fill a highly anticipated investigative report into abuse in women’s soccer that found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the game’s top tier, the National Women’s Soccer League, and issued warnings that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.The report was published Monday, a year after players outraged by what they saw as a culture of abuse in their sport demanded changes by refusing to take the field. It found that leaders of the N.W.S.L. and the United States Soccer Federation — the governing body of the sport in America — as well as owners, executives and coaches at all levels failed to act on years of voluminous and persistent reports of abuse by coaches.All were more concerned about being sued by coaches or about the teetering finances of women’s professional soccer than player welfare, according to the report, creating a system in which abusive and predatory coaches were able to move freely from team to team at the top levels of women’s soccer.“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims,” Sally Q. Yates, the lead investigator, wrote in the report’s executive summary. “Abuse in the N.W.S.L. is rooted in a deeper culture in women’s soccer, beginning in youth leagues, that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between coaches and players.”Read the Report on Abuse in Women’s SoccerAn investigative report commissioned by the United States Soccer Federation found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the National Women’s Soccer League. It also issued warning signs that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.Read Document 319 pagesLast year, U.S. Soccer commissioned Yates, a former deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to look into the sport after reports in The Athletic and The Washington Post detailed accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against coaches in the women’s league. After the news media reports, and after games were postponed as furious players protested publicly, league executives resigned and were fired. Within weeks, half of the 10-team league’s coaches had been linked to allegations of abuse, and some of the world’s top players had recounted their own stories of mistreatment.Cindy Parlow Cone, the U.S. Soccer president and a former member of the national team, called the findings “devastating and infuriating.” Cone said there are “systemic failures within soccer that must be corrected,” and that the federation would immediately implement a number of the report’s recommendations.A National Women’s Soccer League game between Gotham F.C. and the Washington Spirit last October.Monique Jaques for The New York TimesThe report made a lengthy list of recommendations that it said should be adopted by U.S. Soccer, and in some cases the women’s league, including making a public list of individuals suspended or barred by U.S. Soccer, meaningfully vetting coaches when licensing them, requiring investigations into accusations of abuse, making clear policies and rules around acceptable behavior and conduct, and hiring player safety officers, among other requirements.The report also raises the question of whether some team owners should be disciplined or forced to sell their teams, as it recommended the league “determine whether disciplinary action is appropriate for any of these owners or team executives.”Even with so much of the worst abuse publicly known, the Yates report is stunning in how meticulously it details how many powerful soccer officials were told about abuse and how little they did to investigate or stop it. Among those whose inaction is detailed are a former U.S. Soccer president; the organization’s former chief executive and women’s national team coach; and the leadership of the Portland Thorns, one of the league’s most popular and best-supported teams.“Teams, the league and the federation not only repeatedly failed to respond appropriately when confronted with player reports and evidence of abuse, they also failed to institute basic measures to prevent and address it,” Yates wrote. She added that “abusive coaches moved from team to team, laundered by press releases thanking them for their service,” while those with knowledge of their misconduct stayed silent.In a statement, the women’s league said in the report, and an investigation it is undertaking with the players’ union, “will be critical to informing and implementing systemic reform and ensuring that the N.W.S.L. is a league where players are supported, on and off the pitch.” The players’ union said in a statement that players who had spoken to investigators “have shown profound courage and bravery, and we stand with them.”The national team players association released a statement saying it was “dismayed” that some clubs and U.S. Soccer staff “impeded the investigation,” and urged U.S. Soccer to implement the report’s recommendations. National team players largely did not respond publicly to the report, as they were on a plane to London for a match against England as the report was released.The report said the sport does little to train athletes and coaches about harassment, retaliation and fraternization. It noted that “overwhelming” numbers of players, coaches and U.S. Soccer staff members remarked that “women players are conditioned to accept and respond to abusive coaching behaviors as youth players.”From left, Rory Dames, Christy Holly and Paul Riley.Getty ImagesWhile the report details complaints made about several coaches, it focuses its narrative on three: Paul Riley, Rory Dames and Christy Holly. The accusations against Riley, who last coached the North Carolina Courage, and Dames, who coached the Chicago Red Stars, have been well documented in news media reports. The accusations against Holly, who was abruptly dismissed as coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year with little explanation, have not been aired publicly before.Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Holly declined to comment.Holly sexually coerced a player, according to the report, by inviting her to his home for what he said was a session to watch game film. Instead, he showed the player pornography and masturbated in front of her. Another time, according to the report, after calling in the player again under the pretense of watching game film, Holly groped the player’s genitals and breasts each time the film showed she made a mistake.While coaching in the women’s league years earlier, the report also found, Holly drew complaints of verbal abuse and mistreatment and had a relationship with a player “that caused a toxic team environment.” Yet little vetting of his past occurred as he moved from job to job.The report found that Riley “leveraged his position” as a coach to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships while working previously in a different women’s soccer league, and it said that investigators received “credible reports of sexual misconduct with other players” that were not detailed in the final report.Dames, a longtime youth soccer coach, fostered a “sexualized team environment” that included speaking to youth players about their sex lives, according to the report. That environment “crossed the line to sexual relationships” in multiple cases, which the report says “may have begun after the age of consent.” Dames also screamed at and belittled players, and joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Portland Thorns fans lit a smoke bomb last November as part of a protest of the sexual misconduct scandal in the league.Steve Dykes/Getty ImagesIn the cases of all three coaches, the report found, the women’s league and U.S. Soccer officials, as well as individual team owners and executives, were repeatedly made aware of complaints of inappropriate behavior but largely did nothing to address them or prevent them from occurring elsewhere.Sexual misconduct allegations were brought against Riley each year from 2015 to 2021, for example, and an anonymous player survey in 2014 also identified Riley, then coaching the Portland Thorns, as verbally abusive and sexist. The survey results were seen by U.S. Soccer and league officials, and feedback was distributed to the Thorns owner Merritt Paulson.In 2015, after the Thorns conducted an investigation, Riley was terminated. But the team said publicly that it had chosen not to extend his contract, and Riley was not disciplined. When he was hired by another team months later, no one from the league or the federation — which at the time effectively ran and bankrolled the league — provided his new team with any of the complaints or information used to substantiate his termination by the Thorns.Players also complained about Dames for years, beginning in 2014, when they told Sunil Gulati, then the U.S. Soccer president, and Jill Ellis, then the women’s national team head coach, that Dames had created a hostile work environment with the Chicago Red Stars, according to the report. Dames was also called abusive by his players in anonymous surveys, and in 2018 he was investigated after another prominent player complained. Yet while a U.S. Soccer investigation into that case substantiated many of the complaints, the report was not distributed throughout the organization or to the league or the Red Stars, and Dames was not disciplined.Jeff Plush at a news conference in 2017.Craig Barritt/Getty Images for LifetimeIn addition to detailing the behavior of several prominent coaches and the inaction of others, the report also took note of individuals and organizations who were not forthcoming or who actively tried to stymie the investigation — even as some publicly said they were cooperating.Jeff Plush, who was the commissioner of the women’s league from 2015 and 2017 and is now the head of U.S.A. Curling, did not respond to the investigators, the report said. Dan Flynn, the retired U.S. Soccer chief executive, responded only to written questions and would not sit for an interview.The Thorns, meanwhile, “interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments” to impede the investigation, according to the report. Racing Louisville F.C. declined to provide documents about Holly’s tenure, and told investigators that current and former employees could not speak about him because of nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements the team had signed with Holly when he was fired.The Chicago Red Stars also delayed production of documents for months.Rectifying the problems identified in the report will be difficult. Soccer in the United States is run by a number of organizations — federations, professional leagues, youth clubs and state soccer organizations — that have overlapping authority, a tangled web that the report suggested may have played a role in reports of abusive behavior going unheeded.And the revelations may not be over. A separate joint investigation by the women’s league and its players association has not been completed, and the report also did not investigate youth soccer, even as it made clear that the investigators believe abuse is prevalent there as well.“The roots of abuse in women’s soccer run deep and will not be eliminated through reform in the N.W.S.L. alone,” investigators wrote. More

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      6 Takeaways From the Report on Sexual Misconduct in Women’s Soccer

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      The report focused on three coaches who have been accused of abuse and the lack of action by leaders at U.S. Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League.A report published Monday detailed “systemic” verbal abuse and sexual misconduct by coaches at the highest levels of women’s soccer in the United States, and found that leaders in the United States Soccer Federation, the National Women’s Soccer League and throughout American soccer had failed to act over the years on reports from players.The report was commissioned by U.S. Soccer, which asked Sally Q. Yates, a former U.S. deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to lead an investigation after news media reports documented accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against N.W.S.L. coaches.The report focuses on three coaches — Christy Holly, Paul Riley and Rory Dames — highlighting a history of sexual misconduct allegations against them and executives’ failure to investigate and act on the accusations. It also warned that girls face abuse in youth soccer.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday, and Holly declined to comment. Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Here are six takeaways from the report:Christy HollyHolly was fired as the coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year, during the team’s inaugural season, with minimal public explanation from the team. While accusations against Riley and Dames had been detailed in news media reports, the accusations against Holly were not publicly known.Christy Holly, left, was coach of Racing Louisville F.C.Getty ImagesThe report found that Holly’s misconduct while coaching Louisville included sexual contact, inappropriate text messages, abuse of power and retaliation. In one instance, Holly invited a player to his home to watch game film but instead masturbated in front of her and showed her pornography. While watching game film with the player on a separate occasion, Holly groped the player’s breasts and genitals whenever the film showed she had made a mistake.Holly also sent the player nude pictures of himself and asked her to send sexual pictures of herself to him, according to the report. The player said that she felt “guilted” and “forced” to send photos. The player told investigators that “Holly constantly reminded her to ‘loosen up,’ telling her that having ‘fun’ with him would improve her performance on the field.”Paul RileyAnother narrative in the report centers on Paul Riley, who was fired from the North Carolina Courage last year. The report found that Riley had “leveraged his position” to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships.“Paul Riley’s abuse was prolonged and wide-ranging,” the report said. “It spanned multiple leagues, teams and players. It included emotional misconduct, abuse of power and sexual misconduct.”Paul Riley was coach of the North Carolina Courage.Getty ImagesOne player said Riley made sexual advances toward her on several occasions. In one instance, the player said, Riley asked her to watch game film in his hotel room. When the player arrived at his room, she said, Riley answered the door wearing only underwear and told her to get on the bed. The player said she left once she realized that there was no game film on the television.“I just didn’t feel safe,” the player said. “I didn’t enjoy playing. It was a bad situation.”Rory DamesThe report also details accusations against Rory Dames, who resigned from the Chicago Red Stars last year and was also coach of the Chicago Eclipse Select youth soccer team. It found that he created a “sexualized team environment” at the youth club that “crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent.” It also said that he verbally abused his players and that he joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Rory Dames was coach of the Chicago Red Stars.Getty ImagesOne player who played for Dames on the Eclipse team said that on one occasion, Dames offered her a ride home from practice and asked her questions about sex. The player said that Dames “wouldn’t take me home until I answered the questions.”The report also said that it was not uncommon for Dames to spend time alone with girls from youth teams without another adult present, including in their childhood bedrooms.Lack of oversightThe report also detailed how allegations of abuse or misconduct were often not fully investigated. When they were, the accused coaches later had opportunities to coach elsewhere. The report found that several investigations across the league “failed to successfully root out misconduct.”After the 2015 N.W.S.L. season, one player reported Riley’s sexual misconduct to the Portland Thorns, where he was then coaching, and the league. The Thorns conducted an investigation that lasted one week, and Riley was promptly terminated from the team. But the Thorns did not inform their players, other teams or the public about the reason for Riley’s termination. Riley was later hired by another women’s league team.The report said that several players tried to raise concerns about Dames over the years, including in 2014, 2015 and 2018. A report by the United States Women’s National Team Players Association in 2018 prompted Lydia Wahlke, U.S. Soccer’s chief legal officer, to hire outside counsel to investigate Dames. By October 2018, the investigation had found that Dames created “a cycle of emotional abuse and manipulation” at the Chicago Red Stars. But Wahlke did not share the findings with the Red Stars or the N.W.S.L.One player said she had realized that reporting Dames’s conduct “was a lost cause.”Youth soccerThe investigation did not directly examine youth soccer in the United States, but the report found several instances of verbal and sexual abuse of players.“The culture of tolerating verbal abuse of players goes beyond the N.W.S.L.,” the report said. “Players also told us that their experiences of verbal abuse and blurred relationships with coaches in youth soccer impacted their ability to discern what was out of bounds in the N.W.S.L.”One example cited in the report details an anonymous complaint that Riley had created an “unsafe environment” in his F.C. Fury Development Academy girls’ program and that a coach in the program had “inappropriately touched a minor player.” The person making the complaint said that Riley had not reported the incident and expressed “fear of reprisal from Riley for speaking out,” adding that Riley is “known to be vindictive to anyone who crossed him.”RecommendationsAmong its recommendations, the report said that teams should be required to disclose coaches’ misconduct to their leagues to ensure that the coaches cannot move freely from one team to another, and that the N.W.S.L. should be required to meaningfully vet its coaches and investigate allegations of misconduct.The report also recommended that the N.W.S.L. conduct an annual training for players and coaches on issues of misconduct and harassment, and that teams designate an individual responsible for player safety.The report also advised U.S. Soccer to examine whether it should institute other measures in youth soccer to protect young players. More

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      Deadly Soccer Clash in Indonesia Puts Police Tactics, and Impunity, in Spotlight

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      Experts say officers are almost never held accountable for their actions. And in a huge police budget, billions are spent on tear gas, batons and other devices deployed during protests.For years, tens of thousands of Indonesians have faced off against a police force that many say is corrupt, uses brute force to suppress crowds and is accountable to no one.In the capital, Jakarta, the police shot and killed 10 people while protesters were campaigning against President Joko Widodo’s re-election in 2019. The next year, officers beat hundreds of people across 15 provinces with batons as they protested a new law. And in the northern city of Ternate in April, officers fired tear gas at a crowd of peaceful student demonstrators, sickening three toddlers.The world caught a glimpse of those tactics on Saturday, when riot officers in the city of Malang beat soccer fans with sticks and shields and, without warning, sprayed tear gas at tens of thousands of spectators crowded in a stadium. The police force’s methods set off a stampede that culminated in the deaths of 125 people — one of the worst disasters in the history of the sport.Experts said the tragedy laid bare the systemic problems confronting the police, many of whom are poorly trained in crowd control and highly militarized. In nearly all instances, analysts say, they have never had to answer for missteps.“To me, this is absolutely a function of the failure of police reform in Indonesia,” said Jacqui Baker, a political economist at Murdoch University in Perth in Australia, who studies policing in Indonesia.For more than two decades, rights activists and the government’s ombudsman have conducted inquiries into the actions of the Indonesian police. These reports, according to Ms. Baker, have often made their way to the chief of police, but to little or no effect.Riot police beat soccer fans with sticks and shields, and fired tear gas at tens of thousands of spectators at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, on Saturday.H Prabowo/EPA, via Shutterstock“Why do we continue to be faced with impunity?” she said. “Because there is zero political interest in really bringing about a professional police force.”After the violence on Saturday, many Indonesians took to Twitter to call for the national police chief to be fired. And, as of Monday night, close to 16,000 people had signed a petition calling for the police to stop using tear gas. The government moved quickly to quell public anger, suspending the police chief in Malang and pledging to announce the names of the suspects responsible for the tragedy within days.The police in Indonesia were never this formidable or this violent. During the three-decade rule of the dictator Suharto, it was the military that was viewed as all powerful. But after his fall in 1998, as part of a series of reforms, the government assigned responsibility for internal security to the police, giving the force enormous power.In many instances, police officers have the final say on whether a case should be prosecuted. Accepting bribes is common, analysts say. And any accusation of police misconduct is left entirely to top officials to investigate. Most of the time, rights groups say, they do not.Wirya Adiwena, deputy director of Amnesty International Indonesia, said there “almost never has been” any trial over the excessive use of police force except in 2019, when two students were killed on Sulawesi Island during protests.Protesters in Jakarta demanded a government investigation into the killing of two university students in southeast Sulawesi in 2019.Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOpinion polls have shown a sharp decline in public trust toward the police — dropping to 54.2 percent in August 2022 from 71.6 percent in April that year after reports emerged that a two-star police general had killed his subordinate and instructed other officers to cover it up.The lack of police accountability has coincided with a ballooning budget. This year, the national police budget stands at $7.2 trillion, more than double the figure in 2013. By share, its budget is the third-largest among all government ministries in the country, exceeding the amount given to the education and health ministries.Much of that money has been spent on tear gas, batons and gas masks. Andri Prasetiyo, a finance and policy researcher who has analyzed years of government procurement data, said that in the past decade, the national police have spent about $217.3 million to procure helmets, shields, tactical vehicles and other implements deployed during protests.The purchase of tear gas spiked in 2017 to $21.7 million, according to Mr. Andri, after Jakarta was rocked by a series of protests involving tens of thousands of Indonesians who demanded that the city’s first Chinese Christian governor in decades be jailed for blasphemy.Experts on policing say that 2019 was a turning point in the police force’s use of tear gas. In May of that year, officers clashed with demonstrators as protests over the presidential election devolved into violence, resulting in deaths, some of them involving teenagers.Rivanlee Anandar, the deputy coordinator of the rights watchdog the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, says that there has been no “follow-up and investigation” into the deaths. He has visited the families of five victims and says that an autopsy had been performed in only one case, and that family has not learned the results.“We don’t know who the perpetrators are until today,” he said.The national police force budget has swelled to $7.2 trillion. Much of which has been spent on tactical gear such as tear gas, batons and gas masks.Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesThe prevalent use of tear gas by the police has transcended geography. When faced with mass demonstrations, officers from Jakarta to Kalimantan have consistently reached for the chemical to subdue protesters. The budget for tear gas munitions, which had dropped after the 2017 allocation, soared again in 2020 to $14.8 million, a sixfold increase from the previous year, Mr. Andri said.That year, the police deployed tear gas in crowds protesting against coronavirus measures. Later in 2020, they used it again to disperse throngs demonstrating against a sweeping new law that slashed protections for workers and the environment. Amnesty International Indonesia said it had documented at least 411 victims of excessive police force in 15 provinces during those protests.“It’s become more of a pattern now,” said Sana Jaffrey, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta.Ms. Jaffrey says that the police budget over the years has been allocated to quell many recent demonstrations, but that “the nuts and bolts and the daily grass-roots work of the police has been ignored.”In January this year, the national police spent almost $3.3 million to buy batons specifically for officers in the East Java Province, the location of Malang, according to Mr. Andri.In anticipation of violence at soccer matches, many police officers turn up decked out in helmets, vests and shields, and armed with batons. Some fan clubs have commanders who engage in physical training to prepare for fights. Several teams arrive at matches in armored personnel carriers.Still, experts said they were shocked at the police force’s chaotic response at the stadium on Saturday, given that soccer violence is common in the country — with frequent brawls between fans of rival clubs — and that the police should have a playbook for any unrest.Lighting candles during a vigil on Sunday for the victims outside the soccer stadium in Malang, Indonesia.Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesIn 2018, riot police fired tear gas in the Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang to quell violence during a match with the home team, Arema. A 16-year-old boy died days later. There were no reports of whether there was an investigation into his death or how the police had handled the riots.Now, the authorities plan to investigate what went wrong on Saturday, when thousands of supporters gathered in Malang to see Arema host Persebaya Surabaya. After Arema suffered a surprising defeat, 3-2, some fans ran onto the field. The police then unleashed a wave of violence and fired tear gas, witnesses said.The chief security minister said that officers suspected of wrongful violence at the stadium would face criminal charges.On Sunday, the police chief of East Java, Inspector General Nico Afinta, said that the police had taken actions that were in accordance with their procedures. He said that tear gas had been deployed “because there was anarchy,” and that fans “were about to attack the officers and had damaged the cars.”In a sign that the Malang Police Department had tried to anticipate the violence, it asked organizers to move the match to 3:30 p.m. “for security considerations,” according to a letter that was circulated online and whose contents were confirmed by the East Java Province police with The New York Times. An earlier time slot, the thinking went, would make the event more family-friendly. But the police request was rejected. The organizers could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.Many rights activists say that to improve law enforcement tactics, they have consistently made these recommendations to the police: Do not immediately reach for the tear gas; do not swing batons at people on first instinct; understand how to control crowds; de-escalate conflict.“The standard operating procedure should not be that the police jumps from zero to 100,” said Mr. Wirya, of Amnesty International Indonesia.Dera Menra Sijabat More

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      Death Is Rare at Soccer Games, but Aggressive Policing Can Light a Match

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      This is not the first time this year that the sport has had to confront the reality that tragedies often result from failures of policing, security and crowd management.The tear gas still hung thick in the air at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, as law enforcement reached into a playbook that is grimly familiar across the world.Officers had been given no choice but to fire the chemical into the crowd, the police chief for the province of East Java, Nico Afinta, said, “because there was anarchy.” The nightmarish scale of the disaster was not yet clear. Yet the police, the chief said, had to act. “They were about to attack the officers and had damaged the cars,” he said.The accusation that fans were to blame for another soccer tragedy was immediately recognizable from the tragedy at the Olembé Stadium in Cameroon — where eight people died in January during the Africa Cup of Nations — and the near miss in May at the Champions League final, European soccer’s showpiece game, in Paris.Those two incidents happened this year, but the trope dates back further: for example, to Port Said, Egypt, where 74 fans were killed in 2012; to Sheffield, England, where 97 Liverpool supporters went to a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium and never came home in 1989.These are rare incidents, given the global scale of the sport, but they are bound by a common thread: When tragedies occur in soccer, they tend not to be the result of fan violence, but of an overzealous and, at times, aggressive style of policing that treats a large crowd as a threat and turns a game into a hazard.“It speaks to a mind-set that is too often too oriented toward public order, rather than public safety,” said Owen West, a senior lecturer in policing at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, England. “You can see officers in full riot gear, crowd control munitions. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”He said law enforcement agencies assumed a need to “control” the crowd, and therefore tended to be “overzealous and over-resourced.” “Too often, it is actually the police action that triggers the adverse reaction in the crowds,” he said.The disaster Saturday in Malang carried an echo of the tragedy in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital, in January, when eight people were killed in a crush before an Africa Cup of Nations game between Cameroon and the Comoros.Then, the police had greeted the sight of thousands of fans trying to get into the Olembé Stadium by directing them to enter through a gate that was “closed for inexplicable reasons,” as Patrice Motsepe, the president of African soccer’s governing body, said. “If that gate was open, as it was supposed to be, we would not have had this loss of life,” he said.At Port Said, too, fans had found themselves with nowhere to run. That day, when supporters of the Egyptian team Al Masry attacked fans of rival Al Ahly after a game in the country’s Premier League, thousands more in the crowd tried to escape the violence. The doors to the stadium, though, had been locked, and were not opened to relieve the pressure. Seventy-four fans were killed.The use of tear gas, though, was most redolent of the chaotic scenes in Paris outside this year’s Champions League final, contested by Real Madrid and Liverpool.UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, had two of its previous showpiece games marred by a failure to manage an entirely anticipated crowd. First, at the final of the delayed 2020 European Championship, held at Wembley Stadium in London in July 2021, thousands of fans broke through security barriers to gain entry.Then, after this year’s Europa League final between Eintracht Frankfurt and the Scottish team Rangers in Seville, Spain, both clubs took the unusual step of issuing a joint letter of complaint to UEFA about the way their fans were treated.Paris, though, was the most worrisome of all. French authorities funneled tens of thousands of Liverpool fans through narrow passageways, causing bottlenecks at the entrance to the stadium. Many in the crowd waited for hours at gates that either opened only a few minutes before the game was scheduled to start or did not open at all.As they waited, French security officers fired tear gas into tightly packed crowds.An officer spraying tear gas at Liverpool fans before the Champions League final in France in May.Matthias Hangst/Getty ImagesUEFA initially advised those fans already in the stadium, as well as viewers watching at home, that the game would be delayed because of the “late arrival” of so many supporters, despite knowing at the time that many of the fans trapped outside had arrived hours before the scheduled start time.That trope was seized upon by the French authorities, who in the days afterward tried to blame tens of thousands of fans bearing forged tickets for the problems. The number of fake tickets, however, was grossly overstated and a French Senate inquiry in July faulted the authorities for what it called a “fiasco” at the final, determining that poor coordination, bad planning and multiple errors, including the use of tear gas on fans, had caused the chaos.Five months later, their counterparts in Indonesia directed responsibility away from themselves in the same way in their initial statements. They centered blame for the deaths of at least 125 fans on those supporters who had encroached the field of play at Kanjuruhan Stadium after an Indonesian league game between Arema and Persebaya Surabaya, rather than on the officers who had sought to deal with that offense by firing tear gas into an area where there was no easy escape from it.“It is incredibly dangerous to use a dispersal tactic such as tear gas in this case,” said West, the policing expert. “Chiefly in the minds of officers thinking about that tactic should be where people are expected to disperse to. Some of the reporting talks about panic, which suggests an irrationality on the part of the crowd. But running away from something that is doing so much damage to your breathing, eyesight and general health is an entirely rational decision.”According to the stadium safety and security regulations published by FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, “crowd control gas” should not be “carried or used” by stewards or police officers positioned on the side of the field inside a stadium. FIFA, though, admitted Sunday that those principles can only be guidelines at domestic competitions subject to national safety and security regulations.In a statement Sunday, Indonesia’s Legal Aid Foundation condemned “the excessive use of force through the use of tear gas,” and blamed it for the large number of fatalities in Malang, an assertion supported by eyewitnesses. “The tear gas was overdone,” said Suci Rahayu, a photographer who was in the stadium. “Many people fainted. If there wasn’t tear gas, there wouldn’t be such a riot.”Austin Ramzy More

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      Fans Focus on Police After More Than 100 Die at Indonesian Soccer Match

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      Witnesses said officers fired tear gas indiscriminately into the stands, causing a stampede that led to at least 125 deaths.MALANG, Indonesia — It was supposed to be a joyous occasion for fans of Arema F.C., the most beloved soccer team in the city of Malang, Indonesia.Tens of thousands of young people — who call themselves “Aremania” — had packed the Kanjuruhan Stadium on Saturday night, hoping to watch their team beat Persebaya Surabaya, a club it had defeated for 23 years running.But Arema lost, 3-2, and angry fans began rushing the field. What unfolded next became one of the deadliest sports stadium disasters in history: Police officers began shooting tear gas canisters into the crowd and beating fans with batons, witnesses said, and in a rush to flee the stadium fans piled up against narrow exits, crushing each other. At least 125 people were reported dead as of Sunday night.“I’m still thinking: ‘Did all this really happen?’” said Felix Mustikasakti Afoan Tumbaz, a 23-year-old fan whose right leg was injured when a tear-gas canister landed on him. “How could such a tragedy occur and kill so many people?”The disaster has focused attention on the use of tear gas by the local police in such a tightly packed stadium. On Twitter, one of the top trending topics in Indonesia was “National Police Chief,” with many Indonesians calling for his removal. A spokesman for the national police said that in addition to the huge death toll, there were reports that at least 300 people had been injured.Police officers fired tear gas during a soccer match at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, East Java, Indonesia, on Saturday.Yudha Prabowo/Associated PressViolent, often deadly rivalries between major teams are common in Indonesia. Some teams even have fan clubs with so-called commanders, who lead large groups of supporters. Flares are often thrown onto the field, and riot police are a regular presence at many matches. Since the 1990s, dozens of fans have been killed in soccer-related violence.But Indonesia has never before seen a sports stadium disaster on this scale. Saturday’s tragedy appeared to be a perfect storm of everything that could go wrong at a soccer match.Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, has asked the police chief for a thorough investigation into the cause of the incident. In a televised speech to the nation, he said he had also ordered the minister of youth and sports and the chairman of Indonesia’s football association to evaluate security at soccer matches.“I regret that this tragedy occurred,” Mr. Joko said. “And I hope this is the last football tragedy in the country.”The police defended their use of tear gas, which they said was necessary to subdue aggrieved fans. East Java’s police chief, Inspector General Nico Afinta, said the gas was deployed “because there was anarchy.” He said the fans “were about to attack the officers and had damaged the cars.”But witnesses dispute Mr. Afinta’s account, saying that police officers fired tear gas indiscriminately into the stands, causing a stampede and many people to suffocate. Videos circulating on Twitter showed fans scaling a fence as they tried to flee the clouds of tear gas. Other videos showed security forces with shields and batons kicking and hitting fans who had rushed onto the field.Officers with a damaged police vehicle after the deadly events at Kanjuruhan Stadium on Saturday.Yudha Prabowo/Associated PressThe stadium was over capacity. Mahfud MD, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, said that the local football committee had printed 42,000 tickets, more than the stadium’s 38,000 seats. Mr. Afinto, the East Java police chief, said there were 40,000 people inside the stadium.The police came armed with tear gas, even though its use at games is prohibited by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Owen West, a senior lecturer on policing at the Edge Hill University in Britain, said the use of crowd control munitions and full riot gear “becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy” because officers’ “tactical assumptions are all initiated around a sense of losing control.”“It is incredibly, incredibly dangerous to use a dispersal tactic such as tear gas in this case,” said Mr. West. “I’m guessing it was used without any thought of where thousands of people might go to.”One fan, Joshua Nade, said that after the match ended, two or three angry fans came down from the stands and were seen shouting at the players. Police officers entered to turn the fans back, drawing more people onto the field. Some scuffling between the police and fans prompted officers to fire the first bursts of tear gas around 10:30 p.m. local time.Then at 11 p.m., the security forces suddenly started firing tear gas at a steady clip into the stands, said Mr. Joshua, who like many Javanese does not use a family name. That prompted hundreds of people to rush to the exits. Officers continued firing tear gas for an hour, according to Mr. Joshua.Soccer fans carrying an injured man away from the stadium.Yudha Prabowo/Associated PressOutside the stadium, hundreds of angry fans clashed with the police. Some of the exits were sealed off, ostensibly to keep fans from flooding the stadium. But that trapped thousands of people inside.To get out, Mr. Joshua said, some people had to scale fences more than 15 feet high, clambering over other panicked spectators. Mr. Joshua said the police stood by and did nothing to help the hundreds of people who had fainted from the tear gas.In a statement, Indonesia’s Legal Aid Foundation said “the excessive use of force through the use of tear gas and inappropriate crowd control was the cause of the large number of fatalities.”“If there wasn’t tear gas, there wouldn’t be such a riot,” said Suci Rahayu, a photographer who was in the stadium.Soccer violence has long been a problem for Indonesia, and police officers are usually on guard to contend with unruly fans. The last time tear gas was used in a deadly way by the police during a soccer match was also during an Arema F.C. game in 2018. One person died and 214 people were injured.A relative of a victim sitting outside a hospital in Malang, East Java, on Sunday.Juni Kriswanto/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSaturday’s death toll put it among the worst sports casualty counts in history, including a riot in Peru in 1964 that left more than 300 dead, and in Hillsborough, England, in which an F.A. Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in Sheffield resulted in the deaths of 97 soccer fans.Mr. Tumbaz said around 11:45 p.m., a tear-gas canister landed on his right leg, burning his calf and foot. He showed photographs of his injuries to The New York Times.When the firing stopped, he said he helped medical workers carry to the exits more than 10 people who had fainted. He checked to see if they were still alive, and their heartbeats were faint but still present. Then he went to look for his friends in the parking lot.When he returned, the bodies of the unconscious people had turned dark.“I still remember all their faces,” said Mr. Tumbaz. “I hear them asking for help in my head.”In Malang on Sunday night, hundreds of Arema fans held a vigil for the dead. They wore black at Stadium Gajayana, where Arema won its first title. Many of them sang hymns to remember those who had died.The survivors say they are still traumatized.Arema football club supporters prayed during a vigil outside the Kanjuruhan Stadium Sunday night.Willy Kurniawan/ReutersBambang Siswanto, the father of 19-year-old Gilang Putra Yuliazah, said his son and his nephew had gone to the game with three other boys. His 17-year-old nephew did not make it out alive and his son, he said, is already struggling with survivor’s guilt.“He totally went into shock,” said Mr. Bambang, speaking at a hospital in Malang, where his son was admitted. “He looked OK when I found him, but as soon as he saw his cousin’s body, that’s when it hit him. He went blank. You talk to him and there’s no response.”Gilang’s mother, Etri, who goes by one name, said she had told her son not to go to the match. But her son is a die-hard Arema fan and has loved soccer since he was little.“I will never let him watch a soccer match anymore,” Etri said. “I am terrified.”Mr. Bambang echoed his wife’s sentiments. “Yes, we won’t allow him to go to a soccer match,” he said. “Too cruel. The police are too cruel.”Muktita Suhartono More

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      Riots at Indonesian Soccer Match Leave Several Fans Dead

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      After the home team lost, fans rushed the field and were confronted by security officers, who used tear gas that left many struggling to breathe.SYDNEY, Australia — Several people were killed Saturday night after a professional soccer match in Malang, Indonesia, led to riots at the stadium and tear gas being fired into tightly packed crowds by the police, according to league officials and local news reports.The match between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya took place at the Kanjuruhan Stadium. After Arema lost 3-2 on its home field, dozens of fans rushed the field.The Times of Indonesia reported that security officers tried to keep the crowd at bay by hitting and kicking supporters. As fights broke out, the authorities fired bursts of tear gas onto the field and into the stands. One video from the scene showed fans running away from clouds of tear gas on the field. Local news outlets said thousands of fans struggled to breathe and several eventually fainted.League officials said the riots caused several deaths, but it was not immediately clear how many. Initial reports from the stadium estimated that there had been dozens of deaths, but that could not be independently confirmed.The league immediately suspended play for at least a week.“We are concerned and deeply regret this incident,” said Akhmad Hadian Lukita, president director of PT Liga Indonesia Baru, known as LIB. “We share our condolences and hopefully this will be a valuable lesson for all of us.”Soccer violence has long been a problem for Indonesia. Violent, often deadly rivalries between major teams are common. Some teams even have fan clubs with so-called commanders, who lead armies of supporters to matches across Indonesia. Flares are often thrown on the field and riot police are a regular presence at many matches.Since the 1990s, dozens of fans have been killed in soccer-related violence. After Saturday’s match, those numbers will grow once again. More

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      Iran Soccer Stars Speak Out on Protests; Group Urges FIFA Ban

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      Some of the country’s most famous players have expressed support for street protests over the death of a young woman. On Thursday, an activist group went further: It asked FIFA to bar Iran from the World Cup.One of the most beloved players in Iran’s soccer history had his family home raided by the authorities after speaking out against the government. At least two other well-known players have been arrested and detained for lending support to the protests that have roiled Iran since the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, on Sept. 16.And six weeks before the World Cup in Qatar, the Iranian national team’s star forward has suggested that he and his teammates are subject to what is in effect a gag order, warned that even commenting on the protests might cost them their places on the team. Unable to speak publicly, Iran’s players prepared for their final tuneup game this week in Austria with what amounted to a silent protest instead, covering their jerseys in black jackets during the national anthem.Now, a group that has long campaigned for women and girls to be allowed into stadiums to watch soccer in Iran has urged the game’s global governing body, FIFA, to intervene. In a letter to the soccer body’s president on Thursday, the group called on FIFA to throw Iran’s team out of the World Cup for a “blatant violation” of soccer’s rules on governmental interference.As Iranian football fans, with heavy heart we asked FIFA, due to ongoing human rights violation based on Articles 3-4 of its statutes, immediately expel Iran from #Qatar2022 Worldcup.Open letter to @FIFAcom⬇️#MahsaAmini#مهسا_امینی#banIRfromWorldcup#StandwithIranianWomen pic.twitter.com/b1tbOJR3T2— OpenStadiums (@openStadiums) September 30, 2022
      “The Iranian Football Association is an important ambassador of the Islamic Republic and is acting in line with the repressive regime,” the activist group, Open Stadiums, wrote in a letter to FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino. “It comes as no surprise, then, that they have prohibited footballers from showing any solidarity with the Iranian citizens’ call for freedom and the victims of the same authorities’ brutal crackdown.The letter asked FIFA “to immediately expel Iran from the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.”FIFA declined to comment on the letter on Thursday.The request to eject Iran was made more in hope than expectation: FIFA is unlikely to eject the team from a tournament for which it has qualified, especially so close to the competition, nor has it shown any effort to pressure Iran with anything more than public statements. A majority of Iranian fans also would oppose to a World Cup ban; many of them revere the national team, which is known as Team Melli, and see it as a representative of the people rather than the government.More on the Protests in IranA Women-Led Uprising: Casting off their legally required head scarves, Iranian women have been at the forefront of the demonstrations, supplying the defining images of defiance.Economic Despair: While Iranians have a range of grievances to choose from, the sorry state of Iran’s economy has been one of the main forces driving the protests.Attacks on Kurds: Iranian officials, who blame Kurdish groups for fomenting some of the protests, have launched a string of attacks against the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.Power of Protests Wanes: Mass protests like the ones in Iran were once considered a grave threat to even the fiercest autocrat. But their odds of success have plummeted worldwide, a new study shows.But soccer’s leadership could face considerable pressure from the impact of the protests sweeping Iran after the death of Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been arrested by the country’s morality police; any effort by the government to silence the national team’s players; and repercussions against current and former players who have publicly supported the protests.At Iran’s game last week in St. Pölten, Austria, security officers ejected several fans who had brought signs bearing the picture of Mahsa Amini into the stands.Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockInfantino visited Tehran in 2018 to watch the final of the Asian Champions League, a game for which a small group of women was permitted to enter the city’s Azadi Stadium. In the months that followed, he claimed that FIFA had made “repeated calls” to the Iranian authorities to “address the unacceptable situation” of women not being permitted to enter stadiums.“Our position is firm and clear,” Infantino said in 2019, after a fan set herself on fire outside a courthouse where she faced being jailed for having attended a game. “Women have to be allowed into football stadiums in Iran.” He restated that position as recently as last year, when he praised the work of the president of Iran’s federation after a meeting in Doha.Open Stadiums on Thursday said it had concluded that “these were all empty words and promises.” In March, for example, women holding tickets to a match in the northeastern city of Mashhad were denied entry when they tried to enter the stadium. Some were attacked with pepper spray by security officers.“Nothing has changed,” the group wrote to Infantino. “Iranian women remain locked out of our beautiful game, and we are systematically repressed when we try to enter stadiums.” The group accused Infantino and FIFA of allowing a “gross human rights violation” to happen with its “protection and approval.”Female protesters burned their legally required head scarves and cut their hair to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested for failing to cover her hair modestly enough.Getty ImagesSeveral of the country’s most famous players, including Ali Daei — for years the leading scorer in international soccer history — have criticized the government both for Amini’s death and the subsequent repression of protests. “Solve the problems of the Iranian people rather than using repression, violence and arrests,” Daei wrote on Instagram.One of the most prominent soccer voices to speak out has been Ali Karimi, once of Bayern Munich and arguably the most successful Iranian player of all time. Karimi, now 43, has for days used his social media feeds — including his Instagram account, which has almost 13 million followers — to criticize the government; to share footage of the protests and the violent response of the police; and even to advise his followers on how to circumvent blocks on Iranian internet access.Government officials and their allies have called for Karimi to be arrested, and it has been reported that state television is under instructions not to mention either him or his former teammate, Daei, by name.On Monday night, Karimi’s house in the Tehran suburb of Lavasan was seized by the authorities, with a large concrete block placed at its entrance. Other properties were also reported to have been “sealed.” In response, more than a million Iranians added their names to a petition circulating on social media that said, “I stand with Ali Karimi.”Karimi, now believed to be in the United Arab Emirates, responded on Instagram that “a house without soil is worthless.”Iran’s best player, Sardar Azmoun, expressed support on Instagram for the protests in Iran before deleting the post. He suggested that Iranian officials had barred the team from commenting.Jakub Sukup/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHis successors on the national team say they have not been able to be quite so outspoken. Sardar Azmoun, a striker with the German side Bayer Leverkusen, suggested in an Instagram post that “national team rules” prevented players from expressing their views on the protest before insisting that he would willingly “sacrifice” his place at the World Cup for “one hair on the heads of Iranian women.”A number of other players posted similar messages. A few hours later, they had all been deleted. Some players “blacked out” their social media accounts, while Azmoun — known as the Iranian Messi and widely considered his country’s best player — removed all imagery from his Instagram feed for several days. When images reappeared on Wednesday, the account featured a carefully worded message of support for Iran’s women.The unease within the national team — which has spent the past two weeks in Austria on a pre-World Cup training camp — became clear before a game with Senegal on Tuesday. At the request of the Iranian authorities, no fans had been allowed to access the stadium, though a group of protesters had gathered outside. As the Iranian anthem played, and the protesters shouts carried through the air, the players remained impassive, the flag on their jerseys hidden beneath thick black coats.The country’s authorities have insisted that they will “take action against the celebrities who fan the flames of the riots,” the INSA news agency reported, attributing the comments to Tehran’s provincial governor, Mohsen Mansouri.On Thursday, they followed through on the threat. State news agencies confirmed that Hossein Mahini, a defender who had been part of Iran’s squad at the 2014 World Cup and had most recently been playing for Saipa, a second-division team in Tehran, had been arrested for “supporting and encouraging riots on his social media pages.”About 24 hours later, Azmoun was back on Instagram. In a new post that was both a subtle challenge to the national team’s gag order and a signal of his solidarity, he posted an image of Mahini underneath a large blue heart. More