boy and his older brother stole motorbikes in East Java, an elderly man broke into a shoe store and stole shoes in West Sumatra, a village head embezzled his village fund in Central Java and a soldier committed suicide by hanging himself in West Java.
All reportedly because of online gambling addictions.
Online and offline gambling are crimes punishable by a prison term in Indonesia, as is organizing a gambling event.
But with the increase of access to technology and smart devices, online gambling has become deeply entrenched in our society. Lawmakers, civil servants, the police and the very people supposed to protect us from the practice and the harm it causes are just as vulnerable to it as the rest of us.
The Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 members of the national and regional legislatures, including 82 House of Representatives lawmakers, had been gambling online. The anti-money laundering agency traced 63,000 transactions involving public officials, with some depositing between hundreds of millions and billions of rupiah.
The newly established online gambling task force said an undisclosed number of civil servants, as well as National Police and Indonesian Military (TNI) personnel had engaged in online gambling.
Online gambling is addictive, but most people are unaware of the profound psychological and financial tolls it poses.
Online gambling websites are often advertised with attractive graphics, making them seem like other games. Many of them offer a free trial and even display QR-code-facilitated payment services or pay later facilities.
Algorithms that let players win in the beginning entice new users, but when people become hooked, the more they play, the more they lose.
After falling into the trap, some players cannot stop until they run out of money. They often resort to online loans.
According to the online gambling task force, children below the age of 10 and those aged 10 to 20 made up around 13 percent of the total number of some 4 million people engaged in online gambling.
People aged 30 to 50 made up the biggest share at around 40 percent, followed by people older than 50 with around 33 percent and those aged 20 to 30 at around 13 percent.
Online gambling has reached rural communities in most of the country’s 38 provinces.
According to data from the task force, West Java had the highest number of people engaged in online gambling, followed by Jakarta, Central Java, East Java and Banten.
The government has warned civil servants, regional heads and police officers that they could face disciplinary sanctions for gambling.
The government has also promised an extensive campaign with a focus on educating people about the dangers of gambling. It is looking to work with public figures, religious leaders and local communities.
The government also blocked more than 1 million online gambling sites in the past six months.
But new sites continue to pop up, many using servers located overseas, such as in Cambodia and the Philippines, making it hard for authorities in Jakarta to take down the sites.
The Communications and Information Ministry estimates that the number of online gambling websites in the country grows by 10,000 every day.
That means that blocking websites is not as effective as cracking down on bookies and operators, removing ads and restricting payment gateways.
Online gambling has become an epidemic and the complexity of the problem requires a serious government response.