Gambling addiction had cost Indonesian snack seller Surya more than US$12,000, leading to an emotional confession when his wife questioned why he had stopped sending money home to their West Java village.
“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 told AFP, 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 stats prompted President Joko Widodo in June to set up a task force 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.
He would play mobile gambling games until dawn and squander away his hard-earned money.
“Even when you’re winning, the money will be gone instantly. Now, I’d rather give money to my wife,” he said.
