Bullying in Indonesia’s schools is rife and becoming more violent – we talk to a survivor
Classmates, a teacher, even a gym instructor abused Ruby Astari about her chubby figure, leaving her severely depressed; in a country where two-thirds of high-school students in some cities report being bullied, she is far from alone
“Happy birthday, Ruby. We hope you’ll die soon!” her high school classmates sang merrily on campus as the all too familiar routine of humiliation began. Having experienced bullying throughout her teens and early adult life, in her mid-20s Ruby Astari silently wished a car would run her over while going home from work.
It wasn’t just classmates who would insult and mock her; Astari’s former gym teacher also verbally abused her. A self-proclaimed chubby teen, she recalls the teacher asking why she wasn’t tall and slender, like her sister, and how it felt to be so fat.
Astari started suffering from severe depression as a teenager and then began having suicidal tendencies. Now an English teacher in her thirties, Astari is not shy about speaking out and identifying herself as one of Indonesia’s many bullying victims – one of the lucky ones, who never went over the edge.
According to data from the NGO Yayasan Semai Jiwa Amini, Java’s main cities of Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and Surabaya see an alarmingly high rate of bullying at high schools. On average, roughly 67.9 per cent of senior high school students, and 66.1 per cent of juniors in these cities claim to have been victims of either verbal or physical abuse.
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Statistics from Indonesia’s child protection commission indicates that such incidents among children are on the rise – they more than doubled from 2,178 reported cases in 2011 to 5,066 in 2014. Sceptics may say that today’s youngsters are too sensitive, and therefore more likely to report cases, and that it’s no big deal. Others decry the culture in Indonesia’s schools, claiming bullying is systemically accepted.