Located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia is beset by constant risks of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis and floods. Having to comment, provide public education and allay the public’s fears on about 2,300 disasters a year made this dedicated civil servant an unlikely (social) media celebrity.

Then in January 2018, he was struck by his own personal disaster: he was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. He claimed to have lived a healthy life and he certainly didn’t smoke. But most of his colleagues at the BNPN did: Sutopo was a passive smoker.

In a video uploaded after his death, he said: “For the young generation, especially children, nobody will think it’s cool if you smoke, like they try to show in cigarette ads. It’s so misleading.”

Sutopo’s warning couldn’t be more timely: He died about two weeks before July 23, which since 1984 has been commemorated yearly in Indonesia as National Children’s Day. When he worked as the agency spokesman, Sutopo constantly gave warnings about natural disasters. It was only toward the end of his life that he warned against the danger of an unnatural disaster: the tobacco epidemic that is gripping Indonesia.

Globally, tobacco consumption has declined since 2000, except in Africa, the Middle East — and Indonesia, the third-largest population of smokers after India and China, the biggest growth, and the third-largest cigarette market after China and Russia.

Indonesia is one of the few countries that hasn’t signed the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This means cigarettes are still extremely cheap and cigarette advertising is not prohibited.

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