October 2003 Archives
Roskilde Festival is held south of Roskilde in Denmark and is one of the two biggest annual rock music festivals in Europe (the other being the Glastonbury Festival). It was created in 1971 by two high school students, Mogens Sandfær and Jesper Switzer Møller, and promoter Carl Fischer[1]. In 1973, the festival was taken over by the Roskilde Foundation, who has since run the festival as a non-profit organisation for development and support of music, culture, and humanism.
Roskilde Festival 2006 had more than 170 performing bands and gathered more than 79,000 people paying for the concerts, more than 21,000 volunteers, 5,000 media people and 3,000 artists — which means almost 110,000 people participated in the festival.
Eight people have been crushed to death in Denmark at one of Europe's biggest music festivals while attempting to reach the stage where Pearl Jam were performing."A group of some 15 spectators collapsed en masse in front of the rostrum, and people behind them began uncontrollably tumbling over them," one eyewitness said.
Another eyewitness said: "The people massed at the back kept on pressing towards the front of the stage despite appeals by the security guards and the singers."
"All of a sudden there were scenes of pushing, panic, shouts, then the music stopped, replaced by howls and screams. It was unbearable."
Witnesses said that the band had repeatedly urged fans to pull back from the stage before the accident occurred.
A police spokesman said that altogether 26 people had undergone hospital treatment, and three had been seriously injured.
In a statement, Pearl Jam said: "There are absolutely no words to express our anguish" over the deaths, which it called a "horrible nightmare".
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There have been many serious incidents during the Hajj that have led to the loss of hundreds of lives. The Hajj is the Islamic pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. There are an estimated 1.3 billion Muslims living today and during the month of the Hajj, the city of Mecca must cope with as many as four million pilgrims.
Jet travel also makes Mecca and the Hajj more accessible to pilgrims from all over the world. As a consequence, the Hajj has become increasingly crowded. Yet another tragedy befell the Islamic haj pilgrimage yesterday when up to 300 pilgrims were crushed and trampled to death while stoning the three pillars at Mina which millions of Muslims regard as the impersonation of Satan.
It is almost as routine as the haj itself. Seven years ago, the death toll at Mecca was 402, and three years later it was an extraordinary 1,426. In 1994, 270 pilgrims were killed in a stampede on the haj.
