Leaked group chats at Indonesia’s top universities expose systemic harassment of students, lecturers

The suspension, running April 15 through May 30, was announced by UI spokesman Erwin Agustian Panigoro alongside a formal investigation by the university’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Handling Task Force, Compass reported.

The Business Law Society, a faculty-level student organization, separately expelled 15 of the students, according to OH.

The case erupted on April 11, when an anonymous X account named @sampahfhui (“trash from UI Law School”) posted screenshots of a group chat used by 16 male students from the 2023 intake of UI’s Faculty of Law. The screenshots, since viewed more than 11 million times, showed vulgar commentary on the bodies of female classmates and lecturers and phrases such as “silence means consent” and “rape principle,” Compass reported.

Victims’ lawyer Timotius Rajagukguk told a press conference at UI on April 14 that the 16 accused all lived together at a boarding house called Puri Asih and that several held senior roles in student organizations, including class leaders and a candidate to chair the faculty’s orientation committee.

“There is only one sanction we expect: dropout,” Timotius told reporters, as quoted by Compass. He added that some victims had known about the group since 2025 but feared their complaints would be dismissed.

A town-hall forum at the faculty’s Djokosoetono Auditorium on the night of April 13 stretched into the early hours of April 14. Videos circulated on TikTok and X show the 16 accused brought on stage as hundreds of students demanded their expulsion.

Students accused of harassment in the leaked UI Law School group chats face a forum at Djokosoetono Auditorium on April 13, 2026. Photo courtesy of X

One female lecturer who discovered she was among the victims told the forum: “When I saw the chat, I was shocked that my name was in it,” Tribune News reported.

“Are your apologies really genuine? If they are, why do they seem just like copy-pasted statements?” another student demanded during the confrontation, according to footage reported by Mistar.id.

Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Arifah Fauzi called the chats “a human rights violation that cannot be tolerated under any circumstances,” BETWEEN reported.

Minister of Higher Education Brian Yuliarto said he had coordinated directly with UI Rector Heri Hermansyah on the response, according to Coverage 6.

The scandal has since spread. On April 13, a video resurfaced showing members of the Mining Students’ Association at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) performing a song called “Erika” with lyrics graphically objectifying a young widow.

ITB’s Mining Students’ Association issued a public apology on April 15, confirming on the university’s official website that the song was composed in the 1980s and that the viral video dated from 2020. A day later, screenshots surfaced of another chat group, this one among Mechanical and Biosystems Engineering students at IPB University in Bogor, West Java, specifically the class of 2022, making vulgar remarks about a junior female student and allegedly threatening her with academic consequences if she spoke up, Second reported. IPB said it was investigating.

Campus sexual harassment has been a recognized national problem for years in Indonesia. A 2019 survey by the civil society coalition Koalisi Ruang Publik Aman found schools and universities were the third most common location for sexual harassment in the country, at 15%, after streets (33%) and public transport (19%).

A separate 2020 Education Ministry survey under then-minister Nadiem Makarim, the Gojek co-founder, found 77% of lecturers said sexual violence had occurred on their campus, while 63% of those had not reported the incidents they knew about. A 2022 anti-sexual violence law criminalized non-physical sexual harassment, but prosecutions remain rare.

The National Commission on Violence Against Women has called for the UI case to be “handled fully in accordance with the law, not reduced to a mere ethical violation,” according to a statement by commissioner Devi Rahayu carried by BETWEEN.

Devi said universities must build “a culture of equality” alongside legal sanctions. “Only in this way can campuses truly become safe, equal learning spaces free from violence against women.”