Rabu, 27 Juni 2012

Euro 2012, death and a playground


Euro 2012, death and a playground
Khairil Azhar ;  A Researcher at Paramadina Foundation,
A Member of Ciputat School Forum
Sumber :  JAKARTA POST, 26 Juni 2012


Three days after the opening of Euro 2012, a teenager playing in a river drifted off and died. He had been cavorting with his friends at midday in the shallows when he was caught in a fast current and no one could help him, his body was found two nights later.

Indonesian teenagers, especially boys, are mostly soccer lovers. If they do not love playing, they love to watch soccer matches on TV or play virtual games on PCs or other devices. We can say that soccer has become a “religion” with its own rituals for youngsters.

The boy who died in the river was enjoying his adolescence in his leisure time. He was searching for a ground where he could construct his own edifice of happiness.

At night, he could get pleasure from the soccer matches, in the daytime he had to find another way to have fun.

Yet, the boy and his friends actually had to jump the fence of a housing complex on the left bank to get into the river. And the security guards there reckoned that he was the 54th casualty since the housing complex was established several years ago.

It started from a small playground in the housing cluster with its little hut, where dozens of teenagers usually hang out to kill the time.

They are not residents of the housing complex; they are “anak kampung”, teenagers living in the shrinking traditional kampung surrounding the complex.

The teenagers are therefore the unfortunate ones who have to bitterly realize that the space provided for them is becoming smaller all the time as their parents sell their land, enticed by businessmen.

The teenagers are also unfortunate because they cannot play in the playgrounds the local government should provide. The land has disappeared because of greedy local leaders who heartlessly sell it for instant revenue.

More painfully, the teenagers can see some grassy land in luxurious housing complexes or playgrounds which are not provided for them to amuse themselves.

Meanwhile, if they are not dying in the river, they often meet death along the narrow roads. Riding their motorcycles like in a racing circuit, they forget how their parents had to borrow millions of rupiah to buy the motorcycles or had to sell their land piece by piece.

More tragically, they are unable to weigh up whether they will return home as corpses or cripples.

If we look more closely, we can see that the illegal raids on cafes, churches or certain gatherings and the subsequent violence in the name of religion are actually carried out by youngsters who often are jobless, dropped-out from school and engaging in these senseless activities as a way of showing that they exist.

Yet, what can they do? Their youth is biologically and psychologically granted. Schooling, secular or religious, is only a way to channel its explosiveness and is often ineffective related to their affective needs and psychomotor drives.

Their schooling has been for so long criticized for only dealing with cognitive things, trying to turn the children into memorizing machines and nothing more. The youths therefore need empathy and at the same time proper facilities for their psychic development.

So, if we are talking about what we can learn from Euro 2012, or European soccer as a whole, one thing should be about how to channel the abundant and potentially explosive energy youth possesses.

It is at least time to reflect on how a small portion of the taxes paid by the citizens should be for deprived youth, to enable them to play as their fellows do in the developed countries of Europe.

How can we simply accept trillions of rupiahs evaporating in the Hambalang sports complex project, while that amount of money could be used to build hundreds of public playgrounds or free futsal courts? Why must we keep digesting the news of soccer supporters fighting one another and losing their lives, becoming cripples, destroying public or private facilities, or ending up locked inside prison cells while we actually do not care about them?

It was a relief for a while, when Jose Mourinho told the press in Singapore some time ago that the time for Asian soccer to arise would come soon. We must hope it will catch up Indonesia in its path.

Looking at the point where we are now, we are in the lower end of the league. Our youth is not as lucky as their counterparts in Malaysia. Just to amuse themselves in their leisure time, they have to dice with death since the safer spaces they could play in have been stolen by the older generations either intentionally or unintentionally. ●

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