Deportations, Ice Cream, and Junk Ministry Data
Social media played a huge role in what’s been happening this week.
What is going on in Indonesia this week? Or this month, for that matter. It’s like the universe is trying to beat last year by cramming as many crazy things as possible even at the start of the year. We have foreigners deported for being stupid, a government Minister admitting that his own Ministry has junk data, ice cream expertise recruited for vaccination supply chain, and a controversial cop promoted to the top job. Read on. It’s a long one this week.
Digital Nomads Deported
An American woman attracted a firestorm of criticisms from the notoriously vocal Indonesian social media users after posting a Twitter thread offering to help foreigners enter the country despite its Covid-19 travel ban.
Kristen Antoinette Gray was deported on Thursday (Jan 21), three days after the Twitter backlash. Although not deported, Gray’s girlfriend Saundra Michelle Alexander accompanied her on her way back to Los Angeles.
ICYMI, Gray posted a now deleted thread on Twitter detailing the ease of her low-cost life in Bali compared to her hometown, how Bali is LGBT friendly, and that it has a strong Black community. She then encouraged foreigners to move to Bali while promoting her e-book “Our Bali Life Is Yours” and offering tutorials for people wanting to move to the island.
Ms. Gray wrote that the e-book included “direct links to our visa agents and how to go about getting into Indonesia during Covid” which upset nearly every Indonesian Twitter user out there.
The Bali office of the Justice and Human Rights Ministry said Gray was deported for “spreading information that could unsettle the public.” However, first on the ministry’s list of “unsettling” information Ms Gray had spread was her remarks that Bali was LGBT friendly. Gosh darn it.
While this drama was unfolding, another deportation case was brewing up. Russian entrepreneur and party boy Sergey Kosenko found himself in the spotlight for the second time in two months since arriving in Bali in October 2020.
Back in December he made the news for riding a rented motorcycle with a female companion off a pier in Karangasem, Bali, right into the ocean. He claimed that the owner of the motorcycle didn’t mind and was fairly compensated for the damage, with a video to prove it, but he had incurred the wrath of Indonesian netizens.
At that point he had no legal case to answer, but fast forward to mid January 2021, he had apparently organized an unauthorized party for 100 people at the Apurva Kempinski Bali for a Russian company he represented, which attracted the attention of many locals yet again especially because it violated Covid-19 health protocols.
In both cases Immigration found that Ms Gray and Mr Kosenko were nearing the end of their visa extension periods; 24 Jan for Ms. Gray and 28 Jan for Mr. Kosenko, so none had actually overstayed their visas but they were found to be conducting business without authorization, with Mr. Kosenko acting as a brand ambassador and marketing executive for a foreign-owned business seeking investors and customers in Bali.
Unfortunately for them, party time’s over in the island of the gods.
New Top Cop
Indonesia’s National Police is about to welcome a new Chief with Commissioner Listyo Sigit Prabowo being the sole candidate set to be appointed. He is not without controversies, however.
As the lead detective in investigating the attack on KPK investigator Novel Baswedan, he failed to unmask the actual mastermind behind the assault and failed to ensure the police officers involved received the appropriate punishments.
He plans to reduce the role of regional police to only be maintaining public order, safety, and security, with criminal case investigations being handled more centrally instead.
He is also intent on reviving Pam Swakarsa, the controversial civilian security force formed by the military in 1998 which was involved in multiple violent clashes against students protesting against the Special Parliamentary Session ahead of the 1999 General Election. Pam Swakarsa was seen as instrumental in the rise of the now-banned Islam Defender’s Front (FPI).
Sriwijaya Air Crash
The National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas) officially ended its search and rescue efforts on Thursday (Jan 21) to look for victims and debris of the crashed Sriwijaya Air flight SJ-182. Although the Basarnas will no longer search for remains of the victims, the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) said it will continue to look for the Cockpit Voice Recorder. As we have shared in our previous Nuiceletter, the Cockpit Voice Recorder was ripped open and shattered from the crash. All that was found was its casing while the all important memory card is still missing.
As of Friday afternoon, 49 of the 62 people onboard have been identified by the Police’s Disaster Victim Identification unit, including the couple from East Nusa Tenggara who flew using other people’s ID cards.
A Rare Admission
Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin made a series of admissions regarding the issues plaguing the botched handling of Covid-19 vaccinations in a video conference with Pikiran Rakyat on YouTube.
He said that as of 20 January only 70,000 medical workers received Covid-19 vaccinations, well behind schedule (although two days later the Ministry announced that they had managed to vaccinate 132,000 of them and 172,000 by Sunday afternoon).
The Health Minister expressed his frustrations with the Ministry’s own data to establish the national vaccination program, revealing that he decided to use voter data from the General Elections Commission. However, knowing that the Commission’s own data is rife with problems of its own, notably with duplicate entries, incorrect details, and inclusion of dead people, that should tell you how messed up the Ministry’s own data might be.
He also revealed that the PCR testing regime that is in place at the moment is epidemiologically useless because it’s been incorrectly implemented. Instead of testing primarily suspect cases and close contacts, he said many of the tests were done for screening purposes such as for meetings and travel, which can distort the sampling quality, as individuals, especially Ministers and high ranked civil servants, may be tested multiple times in a single week. These screenings could have been done using rapid antigen tests which have been approved by the WHO and can return relatively accurate results in under 30 minutes.
Ice Cream Expertise
The Health Minister also revealed that the government’s own cold storage units for vaccines are near capacity due to the lack of vaccinations throughout 2020. The pandemic had prevented regular vaccinations to take place across the country, leaving a mountain of vaccines sitting unused in storage.
This led to the government reaching out to Unilever to assist the Health Ministry in vaccine storage and distribution because they’re the experts in ice cream supply chain and distribution. Vaccinations and Paddle Pop, anyone?
Until Next Week
Whew, did you get all that? There’s never a shortage of excitement in Indonesia after all, and can you believe it’s only January? We still have 11 more months to go until 2020 mark 2! Err, 2022.
Catch y’all in the next edition. Give us a follow on Twitter or subscribe to this Nuiceletter if you haven’t, share it to your friends if you love what we do, and send us feedback if you have any. Have a safe week, mask up and maintain a distance if you have to meet people.