NuiceLetter in the works, Indonesia's travel ban and more
What's happening in Indonesia from Dec 21-28, 2020
Hi there,
We wanna say how grateful we are for all the love and support you have given us. In a few short years, our growth has been exponential and we couldn’t have done it without you. We wanna keep exploring new and fun ways to grow our reach and presence and provide you with news, insights and WTF moments happening in Indonesia and the world, beyond the constraints of a 280-character tweet.
That’s why @NuiceMedia is working to produce its own NuiceLetter. The plan is to produce NuiceLetter every week, containing wrap-ups of all the news and events happening in the last seven days as well as insights, analysis on issues you care about, presented in the most fun, creative, concise, simple, snarky-way possible… you know… Nuice-style. Expect us to formally launch the NuiceLetter in the beginning of 2021.
Meanwhile, Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi announced Monday (Dec 28) that all foreigners from all countries will be temporarily barred from entering Indonesia between Jan 1 to 14. This is because of that new COVID-19-strain-cum-variant that everyone is scared about. The new variant is said to be more infectious than before. Here is a nice explainer by Nikkei Asia on what we know about the new strain.
Police said over the weekend that a villa in Semarang Regency, C. Java was once used by the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network to train militants bound to Syria. Although it was uncovered recently, the villa was used by the network between 2013 and 2018 and during that time, 95 graduates have been trained on how to assemble bombs, use all kinds of weapons and tactical combat skills. The graduates had since gone to Syria although police didn’t say how many. So we don’t yet know if all went, most or what. We also don’t know what happened to the graduates. Have they returned? Have the people involved been arrested or what. But it is quite shocking that a paramilitary, terrorism training happened under our noses all those years, especially to people who live near the villa.
Save the best for last, here. A health worker at Wisma Atlet Emergency Covid-19 Hospital/Isolation Centre in Jakarta allegedly had sex with a patient. Screenshots of a salacious WhatsApp message detailing the incident had gone viral.
Police confirmed it did happen and have been questioning people. Neither the patient or the health worker have been charged but police had said that anyone involved might be charged under the pornography clause of the ITE law, which is kinda missing the point actually… which in our opinion is incredibly stupid and carried great health risk to everyone.