RICHARD LLOYD PARRY find the authorities well advanced in their planning for the next World Cup.
TOKYO - England's shame came 10 days ago - it happened in Tokyo, although it could have happened in Yokohama or Fukuoka or any of the 10 Japanese cities hosting matches in next year's soccer World Cup.
The scenes were sickeningly familiar; the pictures on the TV news, and the photographs in the following day's newspapers told the sordid story. A gang of British hooligans, with painted faces, armed with bottles, and waving Union Jacks, surged towards a group of stern-looking Japanese police. The riot shields went up, the batons came town, the water cannons unleashed their jets and soon enough the thugs were dispersed.
But the sports stadium was actually a disused gas works. The "hooligans" were one hundred members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police in jeans and face paint. The occasion was a police training exercise designed to prepare for next year's tournament being cohosted by Japan and Korea.
And a vigorous effort is under way to prevent the police pantomime becoming next year's hooligan nightmare.
Never before has a World Cup been held in Asia, and never before has it been cohosted by two nations. Soccer fans, officials and journalists flying in for next year's matches will have to deal with two currencies, two sets of customs and immigration procedures, and two difficult and unfamiliar languages. But the culture shock will work both ways. Korea has a history of violent strikes, large-scale demonstrations, and student riots, and its police are well used to dealing robustly with large and unruly crowds.
But Japan is still an enviably peaceful and crime-free society with no experience of crowd trouble. However ugly the scenes at the World Cup in France in 1998, when trouble broke out it was predictable. If the same thing was to happen in Japan, they wouldn't know what had hit them.
The atmosphere among a Japanese football crowd (half of whom are typically young women) has more in common with a prep school sports day than the tenser confrontations of the European and South American football calendar.
"When I arrived in Tokyo, I asked a Japanese what happens if someone goes into a football match and insists on taking a seat that isn't his," says David Beaumont, a former police chief superintendent and now an expert on stadiums for the Football Licensing Authority. "How do you cope with spectators who are being, not even violent, just a bit difficult? Of course, the answer is that in Japan those kinds of things just don't happen."
The Japanese authorities are aware of their lack of practical experience and have been carefully working behind the scenes to gather as much expert guidance as they can. Forty-five Japanese police officers attended the last European Championships as observers. The Japanese Embassy in London has a full-time diplomat on secondment from the National Police Agency who is liaising with Scotland Yard. And last month the British Council in Tokyo held a special symposium on football security addressed by Beaumont and other experts, and attended by policemen from all over Japan.
Japan has one advantage when it comes to policing hooligans - its great distance from Europe and the consequent cost of travelling there. "For a lot of international matches in Western Europe, British fans can take the Eurostar and make a day trip of it," says Bryan Drew, the detective superintendent who heads the Specialist Intelligence Branch of Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service, and who also spoke at last month's symposium. "But the cost of getting here and staying is going to put off a lot of people."
But the expense of Japan, and the strangeness of the country is also a reason to worry. How do you explain to a thirsty fan with footballing sorrows to drown that $11.90 is actually the standard price of a glass of beer? Or that the fish he has just ordered is actually supposed to be eaten in its raw and slimy state?
"Here you get off the plane and you can't read anything, you can't say anything. For some people that's going to be become very frustrating and you've got to allow for it in the way you deal with fans. The police have got to learn what to respond to sternly and what to deal with more gently. What's just a response to the strangeness of a new country and what is genuine thuggishness?"
British courts can now impound the passports of known hooligans five days before an international match - a uniquely draconian power that they are unable to exercise over armed robbers, paedophiles, or even terrorists. Japanese immigration officers can refuse entry to anyone with a drug conviction and anyone who has received a prison sentence of 12 months or more, even if it was suspended. "If we know someone who's likely to create a problem and who has a conviction, we can tell the Japanese so that they can stop them ever coming in," says Drew.
Once the fans have landed the NCIS is offering Japan the benefit of its intelligence gathering and monitoring operation. A 24-hour operations centre will relay information about the numbers, destinations and means of transport of arriving fans. The NCIS's so-called "spotters" - plainclothes police spooks trained to recognise known hooligans - will be sent to Japan to assist their Japanese colleagues. Even if committed hooligans make it into Japan and evade the eagle eyes of the spotters, organising and coordinating violence will be much harder. The European mobile phones and pagers on which organised troublemakers depend will not work here.
Jawoc, the Japanese World Cup coordinating committee, will hire private security firms to keep an eye on things at the grounds. Stadium restrictions on alcohol are being discussed and drawn up, and bans on potential offensive weapons like umbrellas, bottles and flag poles.
Everything which happens outside the grounds is the responsibility of the Japanese police. Japan's police are justly proud of their law-abiding country and the respect with which they are regarded at home. One of the things that makes Japanese people are easy to police is that they tolerate - indeed are reassured by -the presence of large numbers of policemen.
The notion that thousands of armed law-enforcers could represent a provocation to foreign fans may be very hard to get through to the senior levels of the police and this fear of overkill is the biggest concern of those planning security for the tournament.
- INDEPENDENT
Japanese get ready to head off the soccer hooligans
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