UFOs Over Indonesia

Charles Lear

Wherever there are UFOs, there are UFO enthusiasts, and since there are UFOs everywhere, UFO enthusiasts can be found everywhere as well. This week we’ll look at Indonesia, where members of that region’s largest UFO organization have recently offered their opinion to the local press on the upcoming Pentagon UAP Task Force unclassified report due to come out later this month.

An article written by Wulan Kusuma Wardhani and posted online for The Jakarta Post on Monday, June 7, 2021, is headlined, “Not a cult: Indonesia’s biggest UFO-community BETA-UFO weighs in on U.S. government report.” The two people speaking for the organization are 55-year-old Nur Agustinas and 48-year-old Anugerah Sentot Sudono. Agustinus was a cofounder of BETA-UFO IN 1997 along with Bayu Yunantias Amus and several others, and Sudono is described as a “senior member” in the article.

BETA is an acronym for “Benda Terbang Aneh,” which is Indonesian for “Unidentified Flying Object.” The term was introduced in the 1960s by Jacob Salutan, founder of the Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space. Salutan was a vice air marshal in the Indonesian Air Force and started Studi UFO Indonesia (Indonesian UFO Studies/SUFOI). He wrote two books on UFOs: “UFO: Salah Satu Masalah Dunia Masa Kini” (UFO: One of the Current World Problems) and “Menyingkap Rahasia Piring Terbang” (Unveiling the Secrets of UFOs). As of this writing, SUFOI appears to be inactive.

According to the article, BETA-UFO has over 19,000 members in its Facebook group. The organization takes reports, follows up on them, and publishes the best reports. According to Agustinus, “BETA-UFO keeps thinking critically, meaning we aren’t believers who ignore data and facts.” Agustinus added: “We have members from various government agencies, so it’s easy to check [facts].”

Offering his opinion on the UAP Task Force report, Agustinus said, “If UFOs are considered a threat, they [the U.S. government] will make efforts to overcome or prepare for them. They would need a budget, and any disbursement of funds would need to get approval from the senate.” Sudono added, “If a UFO is not deemed to be a foreign aircraft, and videos of it are not considered to be hoaxes, then aliens could be behind it. The origin and whereabouts of aliens probably would not be touched on. In the end, if aliens are classified as a threat, the DOD would end up requesting a budget increase for the U.S. Space Force.”

A search for other UFO groups in Indonesia turned up a listing of several groups. Included is a group called Omega (Society for Exploration of Space Symptoms), founded in 1979 by Agustinus when he was in junior high school, which ceased being active in 1983. Other groups include Ufosiana, founded by Bayu Yunantias Amus, the Gray Race Foundation, founded in 2004 by Bandung based Fan Fan F. Darmawan, IUFOH (Indonesian UFO Hunter), founded in 2006 by lawyer Hasraldi, UFO-IC (UFO Indonesian Community), founded in 2007 by Michael Gumelar, and Ufonesia, founded in 2008 by Muhammad Irfan.

Doing a search using the names of some of the above mentioned enthusiast/investigators combined with “UFO” turned up some dramatic cases. The text was all in Indonesian so the use of Google Translate was necessary.

One incident from 1959 was reportedly described by Salatun in “UFO: One of the Current World Problems.” In July of that year, on the island of Alor, a creature that was described as 1.8 meters tall with long arms, white hair, and reddish skin, abducted a boy and returned him in a field an hour later. Three to four hours after that, villagers reportedly shot arrows at a glossy white, egg-shaped craft. Police also got involved and shot at it with a machine gun. Police Commander Alwi Alnadad is mentioned as being involved.

Another incident involved the reported 1998 abduction of a man named Herman Suherman. Suherman had just performed the Tahajjud (Night Prayer) at around midnight when he noticed three lights that seemed close to him. Suddenly, one of the lights shot towards him and he could see it was a disc when it got near enough. He then found himself lying down on a bed in a room with a view of the Earth, which he described as being the size of a ball.

Suherman described seeing a creature that was a little over one meter in height with brown skin, a big head, large eyes and a small mouth. At first he thought it was naked, but then he was able to make out that it was wearing a tight-fitting suit. There were other creatures as well and Suherman said that some had hair and some didn’t. According to Suherman, after the experience he developed “cosmic consciousness.”

In 2011, Indonesia received international attention with the Associated Press report of its very first crop circle in January of that year in a rice field in Sleman, Yogyakarta. Citizens’ speculations as to its cause ranged from the landing of an alien spacecraft to hoaxers, with one citizen stating that it was a “sign of God’s greatness.” Freddy Silva, British author of the 2002 book “Secrets in the Fields,” offered his opinion that it would be very hard to hoax a formation in a rice field due to all the mud.

Indonesia has its own UFO Day which is celebrated on July 21. That date marks the second meeting in of an interdisciplinary organization called the Indonesian UFO Network. The first meeting was in May, 2019, and was attended by “11 communities and institutions.” The second meeting that same year was reportedly attended by “28 communities, institutions, and research centers.” Those organizations included “amateur astronomy institutions, UFO researchers, activists, as well as astronomers and space science activists.”

So, more than Indonesia being just a place where UFOs have been reported, it seems that its citizens have an above average enthusiasm for UFOs. Hopefully, for the sake of interplanetary/interdimensional relations, they have long since ceased shooting at them with arrows and machine guns.