I see no better place

“I see no other better place, even temporarily, to receive detainees in Manaus,” Marques, president of the watchdog group tasked with monitoring the prison system in the Amazon region, told reporters. He also suggested prisoners be processed at a venue used to celebrate the annual carnival. “Until the state can solve the problem by building new prisons then these two empty spaces should be used,” he said, in remarks confirmed by court officials."

"[Arena da Amazônia] can seat around 41,000 spectators and features a restaurant, luxury suites, underground parking spaces and accessibility for people with special needs. It also includes an on-site rain water recycling system and sewage treatment facilities to reduce its water usage and is designed to make use of natural ventilation to reduce its consumption of energy. In addition, more than 95% of the material from the demolition of the old stadium was recycled."

"The three were sentenced by FIFA’s courts within 24 hours and the two Zimbabweans began a fifteen-year jail sentence the following day. The Nigerian man was handed a four-year sentence. Doubts were raised over whether it’s possible to mount a fair trail in 24 hours."

“The prisoners had been taken to the soccer stadium, marched past Revolution Square into the heart of the city, and ordered to sing of their loyalty to Guddu and and the Derg. Their fervent cries of revolution and Communism were soon eclipsed by sudden and continual rounds of shooting."

Mr. Makhubu had not used force or threats when stealing the phone, but he could not have timed his theft any worse. He was the 25th person brought before the so-called instant justice courts set up under the National Prosecution Authority last week. Others included foreign nationals from Brazil, Germany, India, Peru, Slovenia, Uganda, the United States and Zimbabwe. Their misdemeanors ranged from petty theft to armed robbery. In the case of two young women, their mistake was wearing orange dresses that FIFA deemed to be part of an “ambush marketing” campaign promoting a Dutch beer — rather than Budweiser, which pays FIFA handsomely to be its official and exclusive World Cup brew."

"Its pitch, they said, was so bloodsoaked that grass would not grow. For years, the only spectacles on offer at the Ghazi Stadium in the Afghan capital were executions, stonings and mutilations by the Taliban, rulers of the country from 1996 to 2001."

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"The people in the image below are climbing the walls of Afghanistan’s only soccer stadium in the capital, Kabul, to get a glimpse of the first public soccer game after the fall of the Taliban.

“Those detained for involvement in terrorism against the United States have received a new soccer field while taxpayers tighten their belts and do without,” Reed observed. “School districts and municipalities go without money for new fields. Yet the government finds a way to build them for those who would destroy us?”

"The Pentagon has said it is restoring the glorious game to Gitmo with a new 28,000-square-foot “super-rec” space that includes a field surrounded by a gravel track with shaded areas in the corners. Detainees will reach the field by walking through covered walkways that the military is calling “habitat trails” — rather like the tunnel to the pitch at, say, Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium, but without the crowds."

"The U.S. admiral in charge of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is defending the decision to build a $744,000 soccer field for well-behaved prisoners, and said critics misunderstood the facility's purpose and logistics."

"A few weeks after the coup, Chile's national soccer team faced a play-off game in Santiago against the Soviet Union. The winner would go to the 1974 World Cup, in Germany. The loser would stay home. The match was to be held in Chile's National Stadium in Santiago, but there was a problem: in the weeks since the coup, the Chilean military had transformed the stadium into a detention camp. Seven thousand political prisoners were being held there."

"The next day, the blood stains were washed away with hoses"

"And it was at nearby Chile Stadium where the great Victor Jara — the Bob Dylan of Chile and a political activist (or was Dylan the Victor Jara of the U.S.?) — was murdered by the Pinochet regime. Jara's fingers were mutilated in front of thousands of other prisoners. He attempted to sing songs of resistance, his hands bloody stumps, only to be gunned down as people in the stands tried to join him in chorus. I didn't want to be near these places any more than I would want to watch a baseball game at Auschwitz."

"Over 11,000 Jews were arrested on the same day, and confined to the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver, known as the Vel’ d’Hiv, in Paris. The detainees were kept in extremely crowded conditions, almost without water, food and sanitary facilities. Within a week the number of Jews held in the Vel’ d’Hiv had reached 13,000, among them more than 4,000 children."

"In Wonsan, eight people were tied to a stakes at a local stadium, had their heads covered with white sacks and were shot with a machine gun, according to the source.According to witnesses of the execution, the source said, Wonsan authorities gathered some 10,000 people, including children, at Shinpoong Stadium, which has a capacity of 30,000 people, and forced them to watch.“I heard from the residents that they watched in terror as the corpses were riddled by machine-gun fire that they were hard to identify afterwards.”

"For more than a year, Sylvio Cator Stadium served as the home to some 2,600 refugees living in a tent camp. Now, it's the lightning rod for an eviction standoff as Haiti struggles to move forward with its efforts to rebuild. On Tuesday morning, policemen arrived at the stadium and tussled with refugees after an argument broke out with stadium officials. The owners have cut off the water supply for those there in an effort to make them leave. "We're trying to isolate the refugees," said the stadium's director Rolny Saint Louis."

In one shockingly tweeted photo, a group was shown en masse in a cage, prompting a commentator to ask “Gorme xoloo noqoney?” - When did we become livestock?

"Police on Tuesday, declared the Safaricom Kasarani Stadium a no-go zone for humanitarian organizations"

"At a soccer stadium in a nearby town, human feces, blood, and other evidence indicated large numbers of persons were confined, and perhaps shot.UN officials estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 Muslim men are still missing in the wake of the Srebrenica and Zepa assaults. So far there is little indication that these men are being held prisoner. Dozens of local Bosnian Serb civilians and soldiers, most of them unaware they were speaking to a foreign journalist's translator, said they had heard nothing about a large group of captives from the former enclaves.According to Bosnian Serb troops, all Muslims captured in the area are being summarily executed. One soldier, reporting to his commanding officers in Nova Kasaba, said a group of more than 300 Muslims who were armed with only 50 guns are still hiding in the hills around the village of Cerska, near Zepa."

"More than 400 people have been arrested in Banias since Saturday, Abdul-Rahman said, adding that authorities had converted the Mediterranean city's soccer stadium into a prison to house them.In the southern city of Daraa, the hub of Syria's six-week uprising, another human rights organization observed a similar situation."In Daraa, there have been so many arbitrary arrests in recent days that the army and security forces are using schools and the city's soccer stadium as makeshift prison facilities," said Ammar Qurabi, chairman of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria."

"Oh God, fresh air, it's so wonderful. It's the first time I've wanted to breath all day," said Robin Smith, 33. "When you think what we could've gone through, it's not too bad in there. But it's certainly not as wonderful as this." National Guardsmen began letting people take a walk on the large walkway surrounding the dome Monday night. They made sure they didn't leave, though."

"Under an agreement between the Brazilian government and local authorities in the 12 cities hosting 2014 World Cup games, at least five percent of the workers building or renovating the stadiums must be prisoners. "My life has changed direction," said sun-beaten Thiago Ferreira, a 26-year-old convicted drug trafficker who is helping renovate the Belo Horizonte soccer stadium, which will host a number of World Cup games. The inmates are selected after a rigorous evaluation process by a group of social workers, lawyers and psychologists. For three days of work, each inmate earns one day off his sentence."