UFO fans in Indonesia on why extraterrestrial life should be taken seriously in a country wedded to the occult

Just 13,000 strong, Indonesian Facebook group of believers in alien life, Beta-UFO, are up against a widespread belief in ghosts in nation of 265 million

They talk about what convinces them UFOs exist, and why Indonesia should take them seriously and launch its own space programme to investigate further

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Members of Beta-UFO Indonesia, the country’s biggest online UFO enthusiast community, with 13,000 active Facebook group members. Most Indonesians are more likely to ascribe unexplained phenomena to the occult than to extraterrestrial beings.

Published: 5:00am, 16 Feb 2020Updated: 5:08am, 16 Feb 2020

Dino Michael has spent a lot of time looking up at the stars in the night sky, ruminating on the possibilities of life out there. If there were extraterrestrial life forms, what would they look like? What would they be doing? And, maybe most importantly, when would they make contact with humans?

“Then I thought, maybe they already did and we just didn’t realise it. After all, there are historical notes that indicate this is the case,” he muses.

Michael, a 49-year-old Indonesian office worker, is a UFO enthusiast.

While it remains a niche interest, research into unidentified flying objects has been slowly evolving from a nerdy pastime into a phenomenon that is being examined closely by scientists.

Children of Michael’s UFO research group members look through a telescope at a recent meet-up.

Indonesians interested in UFOs, like Michael, are likely to be followers of Beta-UFO, the largest online UFO enthusiast community in the Southeast Asian country with more than 13,000 active Facebook group members. Beta stands for Benda Terbang Aneh (Indonesian for unidentified flying objects).

Members report mysterious sightings in the night sky and discuss extraterrestrial-related topics, such as foo fighters (not the rock band, but a second world war term for mysterious aerial phenomena) and plans by the American space agency Nasa and its associates, including the Artemis programme’s aim to send 13 astronauts to Mars.