Indonesians struggle with growing gambling addiction: ‘this is wrong and forbidden’

Millions are hooked on gambling in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation – many using websites in Cambodia and the Philippines

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A patient enrolled in an addiction rehabilitation programme exercises at Marzoeki Mahdi Psychiatric Hospital in Bogor, West Java. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:34pm, 28 Aug 2024

When the wife of Indonesian snack seller Surya asked why he stopped sending money home to his West Java village, he broke down, confessing to a gambling addiction that had cost him more than US$12,000.

“When I lost big, I was determined to win back what I lost no matter what – even if I had to borrow money,” the 36-year-old father of two said, declining to use his real name.

While gambling is illegal in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation – with sentences of up to six years in prison – government figures show around 3.7 million Indonesians engaged in it last year, placing more than US$20 billion in bets.

The statistics prompted President Joko Widodo to set up a task force in June headed by the country’s security minister, and that month the government ordered telecoms providers to block overseas gambling websites – typically in Cambodia and the Philippines.

Some VPN services, which gamblers use to bypass firewalls on foreign sites, were also blacklisted, but diehard gamblers are still able to bet from their phones or through illegal bookies, and it is easy to borrow money from loan sharks.

Surya was earning up to four million rupiah (US$250) a month in the West Java capital Bandung, but once he started gambling, he was only sending a million home.