Indonesian private tutor Patricia has been learning German for two years, armed with a dream of leaving for Europe and driven by a lack of opportunities, economic stagnation and little hope at home.
She is one of thousands of Indonesians on social media promoting a popular hashtag that translates as “let’s just escape for now.”
Anger at the quality of life in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy — a nation of 280 million known for pervasive corruption and nepotism — has stirred student protests, and driven young and middle-aged professionals to seek jobs abroad.
Photo: AFP
“After working for so many years, my income remains about the same ... meanwhile my needs are increasing,” said the 39-year-old in the capital, Jakarta, who declined to give her surname. “I don’t own a house or car ... if I keep working like this, it will probably never be enough.”
In the past month, the hashtag has picked up steam. It has racked up thousands of mentions and reached more than 65 million accounts, analytics firm Brand24 said.
The outpouring has coincided with student-led protests against wide-ranging government budget cuts by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
Savings have been channeled into a new multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund — that reports to the former general.
There were nearly 7.5 million unemployed people in Indonesia in August last year, according to the latest data from the statistics agency.
That has stoked anger against a perceived poor quality of life, as the divide between the emerging nation’s rich and poor grows wider, and the middle class is squeezed.
“After many strange policies and the change of president, I have shifted to feeling like I have to move abroad. It has become a primary necessity,” said Chyntia Utami, a 26-year-old technology worker in Jakarta. “I really feel it. I don’t get social assistance, and I have limited money to spend. Working is just about surviving day by day, month by month, not working with passion.”
Some Indonesians are taking more physically demanding jobs abroad to escape.
Randy Christian Saputra, 25, left an office job at a multinational consulting firm to do manual labor on a tomato farm in Australia.
“I’m tired of the system in Indonesia. If we look abroad, they usually have a better system,” he said.
Poor living standards in Jakarta encourage others to leave.
“The longer I stay in Jakarta, the harder it is because of pollution or traffic jams. It has more to do with the living standard,” said Favian Amrullah, a 27-year-old software engineer, who is leaving for a start-up in Amsterdam next month. “I am exhausted, and feeling hopeless.”
Some foreign companies are trying to capitalize on the trend, including Japanese recruitment firms posting online seeking to attract the most talented.
Experts said social media offers Indonesians an outlet where they feel heard.
“This showed the public’s emotion,” said Ika Karlina Idris, associate professor at Monash University Indonesia.
She said the hashtag highlighted “the public’s concerns about jobs and nepotism,” as well as at “haphazard public policies.”
The uproar sparked criticism from some government ministers. One even told those who wish to leave they should not return.
“Just run away, if necessary, don’t come back,” Indonesian Deputy Minister of Manpower Immanuel Ebenezer told a reporter last month.
He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pro-Prabowo influencers have also spread disinformation, aiming to undermine the credibility of protesters. A fact check team found more than a dozen TikTok videos pushing the baseless claim that student protesters are “paid,” which attracted more than 8 million views.
Pro-government and pro-Prabowo content creators then posted reaction videos amplifying the misinformation on YouTube and TikTok, garnering more than 2 million views.
Patricia remains undeterred, applying for a volunteer post in Germany in the hope that she can find a paid job once there.
“I want to fight there for a better job, life, a better income,” she said. “When I have a place there ... no, I won’t be returning to Indonesia.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS