| SPECIAL
REPORTS: SPORTS, SOUTH AMERICA |
|
|
|
Football
Violence, but No Red Card
Gustavo
González*
SANTIAGO, (IPS) - The violence
associated with football matches in
South America is as relentless as a
decade ago, as the new laws and other
measures to combat it have achieved only
the ”yellow card” effect of a
warning to aggressively dedicated fans.
At the root of this phenomenon there are
sociological factors interwoven with the
sometimes-shady dealings of football
club officials. Meanwhile, stadiums are
no longer family-friendly and the
average football enthusiast is
increasingly staying away from the
matches, according to experts consulted
by IPS.
In Argentina, four fans died in 2002 and
two have been killed so far this year in
clashes between ”barras bravas”
(wild gangs of fans), despite the 1994
Law on Sports Event Violence.
Argentina's President Néstor Kirchner,
shortly after being sworn in on May 25,
created the Sports Security Secretariat,
headed by former football referee Javier
Castrilli.
Kirchner's counterpart in Brazil, Luiz
Inácio Lula de Silva, had expressed
similar concern, enacting on May 15 a
statute that establishes security
standards for sports stadiums, including
crowd control.
Nevertheless, in Brazil, as in other
countries of the region, the eruption of
crime associated with the passion of
supporting a favourite football team is
not limited to the game venue.
The Sambadrome of Sao Paulo, where the
samba schools compete during Brazil's
famed carnival, was the battlefield on
Feb. 22 for the 'comparsas' (carnival
parade groups) organised by the
Palmeiras and Corinthians football
clubs. The clash left two people dead
and five seriously injured.
That same day, a third person died from
a gunshot wound to the head when fans of
the Sao Paulo club attacked fans of
Corinthians.
In Chile, nearly nine years after the
enactment of legislation on stadium
violence, there have been only a handful
of convictions against persons who have
committed the crimes enumerated under
that law. Legal experts told IPS that
the law needs to be reformed if it is
going to be effective.
Uruguay has also taken the legislative
approach. In 1993 a law took effect that
allows criminal and juvenile court
judges to try -- ”according to moral
conviction” -- those who have been
arrested for alleged acts of vandalism
or violence associated with ssports
events.
But sociologist Rafael Bayce, professor
at Uruguay's state-run University of the
Republic, commented to IPS that he
agrees with legal experts who consider
the law ”legal folly” because it is
so vague and establishes an
unconstitutional procedure.
In the late 1990s Uruguay, where the
long-standing rivalry between the Peñarol
and Nacional football clubs still
simmers, added another anti-violence
instrument to its penal code. A citizen
security law was passed that includes a
provision for obligating alleged violent
fans to remain at home when their
favourite team is playing.
And in Colombia, the country's endemic
violence does not exclude professional
football from its reach. The sport's
history there includes the murder of
referees while matches were being
played.
But the violent act that made the news
worldwide was the murder of football
player Andrés Escobar on Jul. 2, 1994
in the northwest Colombian city of
Medellín. He was killed apparently as
”punishment” for the goal he had
accidentally made against his own team
during a World Cup match played that
year in the United States.
Colombia has no laws specific to
controlling violence at sporting events,
but in November the mayor of Medellín,
Luis Pérez, closed down an entire
grandstand section of the Atanasio
Girardot stadium for 10 matches after
fans of the local club, Nacional, threw
rocks and flares onto the playing field
during a game against Argentina's San
Lorenzo club.
With or without legislation, the brawls,
aggression and confrontations between
members of different gangs of fans or
between the gangs and the police are a
recurring phenomenon in South American
football.
And the price has been high, with 148
deaths in Argentina alone since 1939,
according to sociologist and journalist
Sergio Danishewsky, sports editor for
the Argentine daily 'Clarín'.
”In just the 1990s, the decade when
sports-related violence increased most,
there were 29 deaths, and in 2002 and
2003 there have already been 12
deaths,” he told IPS.
Argentine authorities never cleared up
the factors behind the Jun. 23, 1968
avalanche of people at the stadium gate
that killed 71 spectators. It was a
tragic end to a ”classic” match
between the River Plate and Boca Juniors
clubs.
The ”barras bravas” are a reference
point when it comes to violence related
to football and, says Danishewsky, a
”light reading” of the situation
leads one to see them as ”a simple and
logical extension of the latent violence
that surrounds daily life.”
However, these gangs emerged in
Argentina as clashing groups in the
internal battles of the clubs, ”often
linked to political forces,” and with
time they escaped the control of the
club executives, said the expert.
”They grew and developed through an
alliance with the club leaders, many of
whom financed the groups, using them in
club elections and even providing them
with the words for the crowds to chant
slogans against a coach or a specific
player,” Danishewsky said.
The existence of alliances between club
executives and the barras bravas has
also sparked debate in Chile, where
presidents of football clubs refuse to
identify the members of their official
fan groups, making one of the key
provisions of the 1994 anti-violence act
totally ineffective.
René Orozco, president of the
University of Chile football club, won't
name names when it comes to ”Los de
abajo”, the club's barra brava.
Sports journalist Alvaro Sanhueza, of
the state-run Chile National Television
network, told IPS that ”Los de abajo”,
as well as ”Garra blanca” of the
Colo-Colo club, and other barras bravas
encourage ”certain elements” among
the spectators to engage in violence.
There is consensus in Chile that the law
needs to be reformed in order to beef up
monitoring tools, such as surveillance
cameras, and to protect residents who
live near the football stadiums.
Felipe Chaigneau, press spokesman for
the Chilean National Association of
Professional Football, noted in a
conversation with IPS that the
parliament's agenda has other
priorities, thus delaying debate on the
sports violence legislation and a bill
for turning the clubs into companies,
which would professionalise their
leadership.
The law has enabled sentences -- of up
to 541 days in prison, commutable for
community work -- for fans or players
who commit violent acts, such as that
appplied to Uruguayan footballer Joe
Bizera, of Peñarol, who in August 1999
attacked referee Christian Lemus during
a match in Santiago.
Sandor Voisin, of the ”Garra blanca”
gang, was sentenced to five years behind
bars for attempted homicide against
Manuel Saavedra, who he stabbed Dec. 3,
2000 at the Colo-Colo stadium in a
dispute over the gang's leadership. That
sentence, which Voisin is appealing, is
the stiffest handed down by Chilean
courts under the sports violence law so
far.
But that is an exceptional case because,
”in general, there has been little
willingness by the courts to apply the
law,” says attorney Roberto Salim-Hanna,
professor at the private Finis Terrae
University.
This is why courts and club executives
deserve a yellow card. Marcilio Krieger,
a sports law expert, says that the
Brazilian statute on fan violence was
approved at the last minute ”as
'punishment' for certain leaders of
football clubs.”
”Desperation generates violence,”
says Krieger, who attributes the
aggressive acts at the football stadium
to a mix of marginalization,
unemployment, alcohol and gang
mentality.
* IPS correspondents Marcela Valente
(Argentina), Mario Osava (Brazil),
Yadira Ferrer (Colombia) and Darío
Montero (Uruguay) contributed to this
report.
Email
this page to a Friend
|
|
|
|
