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Brutal fighting took place March 30, before a soccer game in Wroc³aw, between fans of ¦l±sk Wroc³aw and Arka Gdynia (see photo). The fight involved several hundred hooligans from Wroc³aw, Poznań, Cracow, Gdynia and Lubin. They used knives, cleavers, wooden clubs and stones.
Those most severely injured were taken to a Wroc³aw hospital. One of them, Mariusz B. of Gdynia, 24, died despite resuscitation efforts. "Doctors said he was stabbed with a knife in the back. When he fell, he was still being beaten," Dariusz Boratyn of Wroc³aw's police said. Witnesses claimed the victim fell onto a streetlamp, collapsed and was beaten up.
A few of the injured left the hospital, although their wounds were serious. "A few young people of those brought here refused to be examined and simply fled the hospital; the leg of one of them was broken, another's shoulder was dislocated. Still another had stab wounds in his thigh, but he also refused to be hospitalized and left," a nurse from the Rydygier Hospital in Wroc³aw said. Other injured soccer fans were triaged at the Babiński Hospital in Wroc³aw. The doctor on duty says most of them also refused hospitalization.
When the police appeared near ¦l±sk's stadium, the fans began running away, tossing stones and knives at the police in their escape. "Horrified bystanders were hiding in houses and barring windows," a witness told a Wroc³aw journalist. Some 200 meters from the location of the fight, the police surrounded the hooligans. They ordered them to lie down and detained 120 people.
The Lower Silesian police spokesman believes the fighting had been planned in detail before the game. "They did not come to watch the game; they had made an appointment on their mobile phones to fight," he said. The opinion of the police is confirmed by the fact that the fight took place a kilometer from the stadium. Residents of Wroc³aw who live near the stadium said that fighting among fans has never before been so brutal or involved so many people.
A similar tragedy took place in March 2001 when the so-called "double derby" of Silesia was taking place in Katowice and Chorzów. Groups of fans of the Górnik Zabrze team were waiting in Rybnik for Odra Wodzis³aw's fans returning from Katowice by train. A 20-year-old fan of Odra was killed. The 19-year-old hooligan who had stabbed him was sentenced to a 10-year imprisonment.
Victims of such fights also include ordinary residents. In August 2001, fans returning from a match played by Wis³a Kraków and FC Barcelona attacked a car parked on the roadside with stones and clubs. One passenger was heavily injured after he was hit with a cobblestone. In August 1999, two fans of ¦l±sk Wroc³aw going to a match in Zamo¶ę threw out a 39-year-old passenger from the train. The man was killed. The attackers were sentenced to 15 years.
The district prosecutor conducting the investigation into the rioting of March 30 demanded a three-month arrest pending trial. The hooligans involved have been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. So far, the court has reviewed 30 cases and complied with all arrest demands. The prosecutor's representative says those arrested were involved in the most dangerous fighting. The killers of the 24-year-old fan from Gdynia have yet to be charged. Polish Radio Wroc³aw learned unofficially that the investigators are already very close to finding out who dealt the deadly blows.
The City Court has closed its session on the case involving 229 hooligans. A total of 218 people were tried before April 2. In 100 of these, arrests were demanded. They have been banned from all Polish stadiums for three years, and some of them have to pay a zl.5,000 fine and court expenses.
In seeking to find the reasons behind the aggressive behavior of soccer hooligans, The Voice asked the well-known sociologist, Professor Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński, for an explanation. "There can be many explanations for hooligan incidents. One of the most probable is that the people involved suffer from a lack of social identity and look for its substitutes. The attitudes similar to those represented by soccer hooligans are tribal attitudes that can be observed in primitive African tribes. This is a regression to the level of primitive societies. Fighting with a hostile soccer club is nothing short of ritual tribal fighting, which gives the participants a feeling of self-esteem. What is taking place on the field is not really important and is only a pretext to start a fight. A battle against the 'enemies' gives them a sense of their own value and an awareness of belonging in a community united in a common cause. Summing up, the fighting of soccer hooligans means social regression, a return to primitive behaviors, resulting from lack of social self-identity," he said.
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