Football : émeute à Duchanbé – 24 juin 2011

Football: Tajik fans clash with police in new rioting

AFP

Thu, Jun 23, 2011

DUSHANBE – Hundreds of football fans clashed with police in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, the second outbreak of serious post-match rioting in barely a week, officials said Thursday.

Forty fans were detained for hooliganism after the visiting Ravshan team from the southeast of Tajikistan won 3-2 over Dushanbe’s CSKA-Pomir team, authorities said.

« Fans, excited by their team’s victory, left the stadium, blocked the traffic, threw rocks at police, » an interior ministry source told AFP.

Following the game late Wednesday, youths aged between 14 and 18 beat up drivers, smashed several cars and a police van and hurled rocks at the windows of nearby buildings, he said. At least one person was treated at a hospital.

« The mob was stopped only after a police task force group arrived. Many ran away, » an eyewitness said, according to local reports.

The violence was the second such incident in the last week in Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet republics, a mostly mountainous nation of seven million people on the border with Afghanistan and western China.

The national football federation has fined Ravshan 3,000 Tajik somoni ($650 dollars, 450 euros) for clashes last week in the southeastern town of Kulyab. Read more…