At least eight people who refused to wear masks during the Covid-19 pandemic have been forced to dig graves for people who died of the coronavirus in Indonesia's East Java province.
According Tribun News article Eight people who refused to wear a mask as a measure of Covid-19 were sentenced by local authorities in Indonesia to social work and forced to work with the three available cemetery workers.
The article notes that mask refusers who were punished were not forced to handle the bodies. They only did the safe manual work of digging the graves and preparing the space with wooden planks to support the cases. The bodies were handled by public health officials, using full-body protective gear, ensuring there was no danger reports. However, the eight mask refusers opened the graves without wearing a mask!!
Indonesia enacted a national law in early April requiring citizens to wear a mask. This directive was further intensified in July after East Java saw a spike in Covid-19 cases and an investigation into region found that 70% of people in the province were not wearing a mask.
Indonesia, as a low- and middle-income country, struggled to contain the spread of the virus and used the masks as a relatively inexpensive public health measure that can save lives. So far Indonesia has detected over 222.000 cases and 8.841 deaths from covid-19. The country recorded 3.141 new cases on Monday alone, with 118 new deaths for the day.
Some people's reluctance to wear masks for her protection of public health, has snowballed. There are mask naysayers all over the world, with Germany, Indonesia, France and Greece recently refusing to send children to school wearing a mask.
The funny thing is that worldwide there are also those who believe that the corona virus does not exist. As the American president used to say Tramp at the beginning. We do not know if Indonesia's solution is effective, but it shows that the knot is starting to reach the comb, and now the respective rulers are starting to take drastic measures.
Today, after all, the Deputy Minister of Education, Mrs. Sofia Zacharaki, announced that the prosecutors will intervene with the parents who refuse to let their children go to school. Let's see where all this will end up.
