Loveparade disaster spurs controversy, finger-pointing

Loveparade disaster spurs controversy, finger-pointing

27 July, 2010 | 6.03AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Videos:

The initial shock has worn off, but the horror lingers and the death toll continues to mount: yesterday, Loveparade’s 20th victim died of injuries sustained in a stampede at the festival, held Saturday in Duisberg, Germany. German police report 511 injured, one of them still in critical condition.

By this morning, photographs of the victims covered the front pages of Germany’s major newspapers; they ranged from 18 years old to their late 30s, and came from all over the world—Italy, Australia, China, the Netherlands, and Bosnia—as well as from many regions in Germany. Two young women from Spain who were among the dead had spent the year on an Erasmus program in Münster; they were part of a group of friends visiting the Loveparade as a farewell celebration.

Meanwhile, the controversy over who should be held responsible continues to grow.

The New York Times reports that German prosecutors have opened an investigation into potential criminal negligence on behalf of Loveparade organizers and city officials. Much of the attention is being focused on Duisberg’s mayor, Adolf Sauerland, amidst speculation that city officials may have cut corners in their eagerness to attract the Loveparade to Duisberg, a city of 500,000 people located near Düsseldorf. (Der Spiegel reports how some city council members looked at the Loveparade as a cash cow to fill up the city’s empty coffers.) Duisberg belongs to the Ruhr region, which was named a “European Capital of Culture” for 2010, and the Loveparade was just one of many events expected to focus worldwide attention of a far different kind on the Ruhr. Just two weeks ago, the Autobahn between Duisburg and Dortmund was closed off to create what was billed as “the world’s largest picnic”, with 20,000 wooden picnic tables connected in a row stretching more than 37 miles; three million people are estimated to have attended.

Accusations continue to fly back and forth. Mayor Sauerland faults festival organizers; the Loveparade organization, meanwhile, points fingers at city officials and police. Days before the event, in fact, commenters on local message boards had expressed their incredulity that only one entrance to the event—the now infamous tunnel—was planned. Sauerland initially resisted calls for his resignation, but the beleaguered mayor—who was pelted with plastic bottles and garbage by angry citizens—now says that he will not rule out the possibility of stepping down.

Dr. Motte, the founder of the original Loveparade, a 1989 peace march that doubled as one of the world’s first great public techno celebrations, blamed organizers for cost-cutting and profit-taking. This isn’t the first time Motte has attacked Rainer Schaller, the head of Germany’s health-club chain McFit, which has underwritten Loveparade since 2006. Held annually from 1989 until 2003, the parade was cancelled in 2004 and 2005, unable to surmount opposition from Berlin’s political parties, which balked at funding security and cleanup for the events. Loveparade was re-born only after Schaller and McFit began underwriting the festival in 2006, bringing it to the Ruhr under a five-year contract with the regional government. (For his part, Schaller has already announced that, in respect for the victims, this will be the final Loveparade.)

Much remains unclear about the causes of the tragedy, beginning with the number of people in attendance. Festival organizers had earlier claimed that there were 1.4 million people on the festival grounds—a number that, if true, vastly surpasses the 250,000 capacity officially allowed for the outdoor site, a former train station. Those numbers seem even more problematic when one considers aerial photos of the event, in which the festival grounds themselves appear less than completely full.

Resolving the debate around Loveparade’s capacity and total attendance will be of crucial importance in determining one of the most important questions hanging over the tragedy: why were the gates to the festival closed around 5pm, leaving so many of thousands of people backed up in a deadly bottleneck?

One thing is certain: investigators will have no shortage of documentary evidence to draw from, judging from the dozens of videos filmed by members of the crowd and uploaded to YouTube. Videos show scenes of absolute chaos, illustrating if nothing else the terrible illogic of crowds. The videos depict frantic attendees clambering over one another in the attempt to reach an exit staircase; some climb cables which appear to have been tossed down by bystanders above.

In an interview with the BBC (including video footage), London’s Salil Bhate recounts the atmosphere inside the tunnel and how he escaped up an embankment; particularly striking is his impression of the police, who he claims were ineffectual in their response to the crisis. But another survivor praises the police response. What becomes clear in the video is an apparent lack of organization or communication, with some police officers appearing aimless and ineffectual, and others pitching in to extract desperate people from the melee. Eyewitness videos also document actions on the part of blue-shirted Loveparade staff members that can only be described as heroic, as they hoist people to safety.

Finally, even once the ultimate responsibility has been determined, perhaps a bit of soul-searching is warranted on the part of clubbers themselves. Various witnesses describe fights and acts of aggression as tensions rose in the tunnel. One YouTube video shows a police van’s agonizingly slow course through the crowd; when the doors finally open and a crew of emergency medical technicians slips out, two young men climb aboard the van, posing as though the victors of some great battle, cheered on by the audience. A minor incident, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things; but how many deaths might have been avoided if certain individuals had tempered their aggressive instincts? How many shoves does it take to create a deadly snowball effect in a space that crowded? For those who died on the ground—trampled, suffocated, alone—the margin proved all too slim.

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