Kanjuruhan, Erick Thohir and Persija vs Persib: When Memory Becomes Law on an Empty Pitch

On September 12, 2026, the Gelora Bung Karno Main Stadium in Jakarta will open its gates to tens of thousands of people. Persija Jakarta host Persib Bandung in the second week of the 2026-2027 Super League, the biggest derby in Southeast Asia. But the flashpoint of the story is not in either team's attack. Days before kick-off, Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) Chairman Erick Thohir said a short sentence that anyone following regional football understood immediately: do not forget Kanjuruhan. Four years ago, at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, after the final whistle of the Arema FC versus Persebaya Surabaya match, 135 people never returned home. That tragedy is officially recorded in the Indonesian government's investigation report and remains the darkest mark in the country's football history. When Erick invokes it just before a derby of continental stature, he is not doing public relations. He is drawing a legal line. To understand why a single reminder from a federation chairman carries such weight, one must return to the structure of Indonesian football. Kanjuruhan was not a single accident. It was the outcome of a chain of decisions: from stadium selection and ticketing to crowd-control planning and the use of tear gas in an enclosed space. The independent investigation later concluded that the 135 deaths did not come from one individual's mistake but from the compounding of multiple systemic gaps in match management. That analysis matters because it shifts the question from individual responsibility to system responsibility. Since the tragedy, PSSI has implemented reforms. Stadium licensing procedures have tightened. The role of police inside the ground has been reconsidered. Most importantly, the concept of a "high-risk fixture" has entered the federation's official language, meaning there are matches whose security plans cannot stop at fences and cameras. Persija and Persib belong to that category. These are the two clubs with the largest supporter bases in Indonesia. The Jakmania of Persija and Viking of Persib are not merely supporter associations; they function almost as structured social organizations, active from Jakarta to West Java, from Bekasi to Bandung. When these two groups appear in the same city, risk density rises substantially. Not because they are bad people, but because a history of confrontation has created memories that resist easy reconciliation. The September 12 match falls in week two. Scheduling it so early is deliberate: a marquee derby at the start of the season drives the league's commercial momentum. But such early staging also means the two clubs lack the form data for the match to speak for itself in sporting terms. What remains, and what PSSI is obliged to address first, is the safety plan. Now to the part I care about most as a league discipline reporter. The question is not whether this match will turn violent. The right question is: which system is operating to prevent a second Kanjuruhan, and is that system robust enough to withstand the pressure of a derby? On the multi-layered structure of the security apparatus. PSSI handles management and licensing. Indonesia's National Police (Polri) is responsible for public order and match-day security. Bekasi regional police participate in coordinating supporter movement. On top of this, the match organizer, Persija as host, is accountable for stadium operations. That is a four-tier model: federation, national police, local police, host club. In theory, there is no gap. Yet in the practical reality of Southeast Asian football, multi-tier models carry an inherent weakness: when responsibility is shared among too many parties, no one bears the final accountability. I have followed post-match reports in the region for years, and the repeating pattern is identical. When an incident occurs, the police say they had a plan. The organizer says it complied with requirements. The federation says it issued regulations. No one says I was wrong. That is why Erick Thohir's statement carries unusual value. By publicly invoking Kanjuruhan and declaring that any violence or provocation will trigger legal proceedings, he breaks that responsibility-sharing pattern. He places his name at the center of the problem before the problem occurs. In Southeast Asian football, this is a rare act. Officials tend to wait, or speak after the incident. Erick chose the opposite. On deterrence theory. The joint PSSI and Polri declaration that violence or provocation will be prosecuted sounds strong. But to someone working with data, a declaration is not data, it is only an input. The real data is the rate of declared cases that actually went to prosecution in the past. If that rate is low, every declaration becomes an echo. If that rate is high, the declaration itself becomes a variable in supporter behavior equations. I want to be blunt here: this is the biggest blind spot in Indonesian football after Kanjuruhan. Procedural reform has covered considerable ground. But the post-incident legal enforcement mechanism remains a gray zone. And that gray zone is precisely where risk accumulates. Every public-order control system rests on a basic assumption: violations lead to consequences. If that assumption weakens, the entire deterrent structure loses weight. A system does not collapse starting from someone's mistake; it starts from the silence of those entrusted with the scales. On the geography of risk. This is the part few pay attention to. Risk in the Persija-Persib match is not evenly distributed. It concentrates at three points: pre-match assembly areas, transit corridors, and post-match exits. These points are not inside the stadium. They are outside it, at bus terminals, train stations, supporter meeting points, and areas where police authority is unclear. Notably, Bekasi police are included in the coordination plan. Bekasi is a Jakarta satellite city with a large West Java-origin population, including Persib supporters. That is why Bekasi becomes an intersection point. Both The Jakmania Bekasi Raya and Viking Bekasi have chapters there. When these groups move through the same urban space on the same day, collision probability rises significantly. Not because they seek conflict, but because a single misunderstanding in a dense crowd is enough to start a chain reaction. The mistake is not in the referee's eyes, but in where he chooses to look. This is a lesson I learned from the South Korea versus Germany match at the 2026 World Cup. In that match, what I found was not an on-field refereeing error but a gap in the camera-placement and VAR-setup process. The error was not in the viewer's eye but in where the system was designed to look. With Indonesian football today, the story is similar: the issue is not whether the police have enough people, but whether the system is designed to look at where risk actually lies. On the weight of Kanjuruhan memory. In football's legal system, not every rule is written on paper. A crucial part of the law lives in collective memory. Kanjuruhan is a baseline event, an origin event from which all subsequent regulations were built. When Erick Thohir invokes it, he activates that memory as a behavioral-control tool. But memory has a lifespan. Four years is long enough for a new supporter generation to enter the stands without direct memory of Kanjuruhan. For them, it is a historical event, a video online, a name in an article, not a scar in the body. This is the greatest challenge of supporter education in Indonesia: how to convert generational memory into generational discipline. I have observed matches across multiple countries and noticed a pattern. The countries that best control their supporters are not those with the largest police forces, but those with an origin story passed from generation to generation. In England, it is Hillsborough in 2026, with 97 victims. In Spain, the stand tragedies of the 1980s. In Indonesia, that story is now Kanjuruhan. But a story only has power when it is retold by the community itself, not by the federation. On security cost as an externality. One aspect I find notable in this fixture is that safety costs go unreported. Police deploy personnel, organizers mobilize forces, the city adjusts traffic, hospitals prepare contingencies, all of which cost money. Yet in PSSI and club reports, those costs rarely appear publicly. This is an externality Southeast Asian football has not yet placed on the balance sheet. When a derby is classified high-risk, the entire economic system around it changes. Insurance contracts get more expensive. Requirements for fencing, escape routes, and stand distances increase. Away supporters must follow designated routes, losing time. All of this generates cost, and the cost ultimately falls on the fans themselves, through ticket prices, time, and diminished experience. The question is whether safety cost can be treated as investment rather than prevention. Comparing Southeast Asian and Northeast Asian enforcement models. From my experience following Korean football and comparing it with Southeast Asia, I notice one crucial difference. In the K League, after supporter incidents in the 1990s, clubs shifted to an embedded-supporter model in which clubs maintain permanent staff working with each supporter group, knowing group leaders by name, understanding their psychology, and knowing hotspots in advance. This model does not replace police but dramatically reduces the need for police inside grounds. In Indonesia, a similar model is emerging. Bekasi police working with The Jakmania Bekasi Raya and Viking Bekasi is a positive sign. But this is still event-based coordination, not a permanent relationship. The difference is large. Event-based coordination means we talk before the match and forget each other afterward. Permanent relationship means we talk every week, even when there is no match. On the risk structure. I want to lay out a three-tier risk matrix for this fixture. Tier one is on-site public-order risk: crowds around the stadium, assembly points, exits. This carries medium probability and high impact. Tier two is legal risk: whether declared enforcement is genuinely pursued. This carries medium probability and medium impact but long-term influence on the system's credibility. Tier three is reputational risk: if an incident occurs, PSSI's and Erick Thohir's personal credibility will be severely damaged. This carries low-to-medium probability but very high impact. Overall, the risk level of this fixture is high. But more importantly, that risk is manageable. For a derby with two large supporter groups, successful risk management depends on three factors. First, the degree of inter-agency coordination. Second, the degree of supporter compliance. Third, the clarity of legal consequences for violations. Of these three, the third is what PSSI can control most directly, and it is also the weakest. Now to the part where I speak against the crowd. The story Indonesian media are telling, and VIVA told it exactly in that mold, is one of an awakened federation, a responsible chairman, and a derby protected by decent people. That frame is factually correct, but it may omit a hard truth. The truth is this: supporter risk in Indonesian football is not a security problem. It is a social problem entering the stadium. Thousands of young people come to the ground because they seek an identity society has not given them. Football gives them a name, a group, a sense of belonging. When that sense is threatened by a goal, a chant, a small gesture, the reaction does not come from the head but from social survival instinct. No police officer can stop a reaction that comes from instinct. This means every repressive measure is only a stopgap. The real measures lie elsewhere: at clubs creating space for supporters, at cities creating activities for youth, at schools creating narratives of belonging without violence. But that is ten years of work, not one season. So governments and federations often choose the faster path: police, fences, sanctions. The faster path always looks effective until it fails. On an empty pitch, law is only a voice. On a full pitch, law needs consensus. And that consensus cannot be built by deterrence promises. It can only be built by a story both supporter sides tell the same way. The applause disappears, but the cry of the law remains intact on an empty pitch. The Persija versus Persib match on September 12, 2026 will happen. In one sense, the result on the pitch is not the most important thing. The most important thing is whether, by the following dawn, everyone who came to the stadium can return home. If that happens, it will be a step forward for Indonesian football, small but real. If not, every reform since 2026 will face the hardest question: have we truly changed, or are we only talking about change? As someone who for four years has looked at the numbers behind the whistle, I choose to write about what can be verified rather than what sounds right. Because the greatest tragedy of Kanjuruhan was not the 135 people who died. The greatest tragedy is that too many people in the system saw the warning signs before, yet chose not to act. When a silence is entrusted with the scales, the fall is never one person's alone. I have no authority to penalize, but I have a duty to see what the whistle-bearer does not want to see.