More than 80 people in West Java and Greater Jakarta have died from drinking unlicensed liquor in the past two weeks, officials have said, indicating a mounting bootleg alcohol crisis that analysts say was triggered by the central and regional governments’ decision to limit or ban alcohol sales.

In West Java, a religiously conservative province that has been waging war on alcohol, 51 people were killed after consuming alcoholic beverage concoctions that reportedly include energy drinks and mosquito repellent.

Most of the casualties were reported in Bandung regency, with 41 fatalities, followed by Sukabumi regency with six and Bandung municipality with four.

The West Java Police said on Tuesday they had arrested six alleged producers and sellers of the bootleg liquor, locally known as oplosan, in three separate locations in the province.

“Two were arrested in Cicalengka [in Bandung regency], four in Pelabuhan Ratu, Sukabumi and one in Bandung city,” West Java Police spokesperson, Adj. Sr. Comr. Trunoyudo Wisno Andiko told The Jakarta Post.

Trunoyudo said the suspects would be charged under Article 204 of the Criminal Code on alcohol control, which carries a punishment of 15 years’ imprisonment.

“Because their crime caused death, the maximum punishment may be extended to 20 years’ imprisonment,” he said.

An official from public hospital in Cicalengka said 20 people had died in the hospital alone after consuming bootleg liquor. The cause of their death was intoxication leading to internal organ failure, the hospital’s director, Yani Sumpena, said on Monday. The hospital is currently treating 15 people.

More than 150 people had been treated in three major hospitals in Bandung, according to the regency’s health agency.

Meanwhile, more than 30 people died of bootleg alcohol poisoning within four days across Greater Jakarta last week, according to the Jakarta Police. The latest incident took place in Jagakarsa, South Jakarta, where eight people died of alcohol poisoning.

On March 31, six people in Papua also reportedly died after consuming homebrew.

West Java Police Chief, Insp. Gen. Agung Budi Maryoto said the victims in the province drank the deadly potion on the same weekend “in several separate places including Cicalengka, Sukabumi and Bandung”.

The officer said there was a possibility that the incidents in West Java were related to the
incident in Jagakarsa.

“We have coordinated with the Jakarta Police,” he said, adding that his force had submitted a sample of the liquor to the National Police forensic laboratory.

West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan has expressed his concerns over the popularity of the deadly bootleg liquor, saying that similar cases had occurred in Sumedang and Garut. “Communities, especially schools, have to guide children to stop seeking pleasure in alcohol,” he said.

Center for Indonesian Policy Studies (CIPS) researcher Sugianto Tandra said restrictions and bans on alcoholic beverages indirectly increased production and consumption of homemade
liquors.

Tandra said people died drinking bootleg alcohol as some industry-made alcoholic beverages were banned by regional bylaws and a ministerial regulation. “The trade ministerial regulation bans beverages containing 1 to 5 percent alcohol in convenience stores,” he said, referring to a 2015 ministerial regulation.

He said legal alcoholic beverages that were produced under professionally controlled standards should be available in convenience stores. “The more you ban, the more bootleg alcohol is traded underground,” he said.

Tandra also said applying high taxes to legal alcoholic beverages made the safe options unaffordable. “People cannot afford to drink safe, legal alcohol,” he said.

The government could not suppress alcoholic beverage distribution as Indonesian people did drink, he added.

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population, but many of them are considered nominal Muslims, even though the country has seen a rise in religious conservatism in politics in recent years.

Heddy Shri Ahimsa-Putra, a cultural anthropologist from Gajah Mada University (UGM), Yogyakarta, said the habit of social drinking was an ancient tradition in the archipelago.

“Civilizations all around Indonesia have their own ways of making special liquor. We have various kinds of arak, tuak, from all around the archipelago.”

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