SalingSilang Celebrates Indonesia Independence Day With Virtual Flag Raising

As many of you know Indonesia Independence Day will be celebrated tomorrow, on August 17. SalingSilang has created a movement using the #17an Twitter hashtag. It’s also asking users to text a message to a specific number in a certain format. The more messages sent, the higher the Indonesian flag (see the 17an website) goes up the pole. The total message target is 1,781,945. Why? Indonesia achieved its Independence on the 17th of August, 1945, i.e. 17.08.1945.

Indonesia Independence Day was celebrated online last year as well, with another flag-related activity. Through Indonesiaoptimis.org (no longer online), a digital movement initiated through Twitter, people were told to visit the site on a specific hour  to virtually attend a flag ceremony.

Similarly Yahoo Indonesia is using the hashtag  #Indonesia17 to celebrate Independence Day. And as we are still in Ramadan, one of their activities is to break fasting together with Koprol users and communities.

With these Independence Day campaigns, I hope that people will not only participate just for something to do online. But instead, I hope this can be a way of reminding people how hard it was for our national heroes to achieve Independence, shedding blood and  tears along the way. Although we still have to wait for tomorrow, Happy Independence Day for Indonesia from us here at Penn Olson!