Three Indonesian ministries – Social Affairs, Religious Affairs, and Communications and IT – are working together to ban all forms of online gambling in Indonesia, including even websites offering door prizes or free lotteries.
The Communications and IT ministry will block any gambling websites selected by the Social Affairs Ministry, while the Religious Affairs ministry together with Indonesia Ulama Council (MUI) will assess license requests to operate free lotteries, which account for up to 8,000 licenses issued by the ministry every year. The ministry said that there are some misuses of such lottery licenses issued so as to provide online gambling instead.
Indonesia’s fight against online gambling has been underway for two years now, with a “small number” of websites having been banned. That’s according to Ashwin Sasongko, the Ministry’s informatics applications chief, during a discussion on online gambling, as reported by the Jakarta Post.
The fight against online gambling is quite common in Asia as seen from the numerous busts that were made especially during the recent Euro 2012. But I guess as Indonesians grow more web-savvy over the next few years, surely they will find a way around to access the blocked sites. But for now, if the government’s effort to block online gambling sites is as swift as they did with blocking the porn sites, then I’d say that this move would be quite effective to block online gambling access for the next few years.
[Source: Jakarta Post; Image source: livegamblingreview.co.uk]
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