I am currently staying in the city of Yogyakarta, in Indonesia. Just like everywhere else on the planet, life here has taken a rather surreal turn over the past few months.
Here in Indonesia ordinary life started to shut down around mid-March, when coronavirus cases started multiplying. By then I had already been in Yogyakarta for around a month, and had some experience of what normal, pre-pandemic life looked like in this corner of the world.
Here in Indonesia ordinary life started to shut down around mid-March, when coronavirus cases started multiplying. By then I had already been in Yogyakarta for around a month, and had some experience of what normal, pre-pandemic life looked like in this corner of the world.
Indonesia has a reputation as an easygoing place, and its reaction to Covid-19 would seem to confirm it. The country's measures to contain the virus have generally been much less strict than those taken in neighbouring countries. People have not been ordered to stay home bar emergencies, as was the case in Malaysia, and cities have not been put under curfew like in Thailand. People are not being fined or jailed for failing to respect social distancing rules and encouraged to snoop on their neighbours, like in Singapore. Thankfully it also hasn't gone the way of the Philippines, where Duterte's police have been enforcing one of the world's strictest lockdowns with brutal methods.
Down over here, things have been a lot more relaxed. The strictest measures have been taken in Jakarta, the outbreak's epicentre, with businesses and restaurants being forced to close or only do home deliveries. But Indonesia is a huge archipelago made up of thousands of dispersed islands, with the fourth largest population in the world, and putting the whole country under lockdown was never going to be a straightforward process.
Down over here, things have been a lot more relaxed. The strictest measures have been taken in Jakarta, the outbreak's epicentre, with businesses and restaurants being forced to close or only do home deliveries. But Indonesia is a huge archipelago made up of thousands of dispersed islands, with the fourth largest population in the world, and putting the whole country under lockdown was never going to be a straightforward process.
In practice, policies and approaches have varied widely from one province to another. While Indonesia is not officially a federal country, since the fall of Suharto it has moved towards a "quasi-federal" approach, with the provinces enjoying a lot of autonomy. Yogyakarta, where I am staying, occupies a very special position in this regard. While this city of 2 million is far from being Indonesia's biggest, it gets its own autonomous region, the Special Region of Yogyakarta, which is also the only officially recognised sultanate in the country.
Until this day, the Sultan of Yogyakarta is automatically also the governor of the region, and enjoys genuine power as a result. Although there used to be many sultans in what is now Indonesia, this particular sultanate was the only one to receive official acknowledgement after independence, due to its unwavering support for the liberation struggle against the Dutch. The current sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, is genuinely popular with his people. His position as an unelected governor is an anomaly in modern Indonesia, where all other posts from villages heads to the president are now elected by popular vote. It must be added though that in 2010 a proposal by the central government to allow the governor of Yogyakarta to be elected by the people was met with angry protests by Yogyakartans, ready to fight to remain disenfranchised.
The sultan, who is a consummate politician, rejected the idea of enforcing a full lockdown in the city from the start, saying that it would have "very serious consequences", supposedly for people's livelihoods. At the end of March, he gave a speech inviting people to "calm down" since there was no "lockdown" (he used the English terms). At the same time, he invited people to stay home if they could, avoid crowds and wash their hands. At least he didn't call for achieving "herd immunity".
Perhaps as a result of this stance, the measures taken in this city have been relatively lax. While schools are closed and people are encouraged to work from home, shops and restaurants have not been forced to close. There certainly are a lot of shuttered shopfronts around the city, but a fair number of businesses are still open. Shopping malls take people's temperatures at the entrance, but they have remained open too. And while a lot of restaurants are only doing deliveries, there are still a fair number of places that allow customers to sit down and eat. The fancier restaurants try and implement social distancing measures, but there are plenty of roadside stalls that seem to be operating as they always do.
Until this day, the Sultan of Yogyakarta is automatically also the governor of the region, and enjoys genuine power as a result. Although there used to be many sultans in what is now Indonesia, this particular sultanate was the only one to receive official acknowledgement after independence, due to its unwavering support for the liberation struggle against the Dutch. The current sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, is genuinely popular with his people. His position as an unelected governor is an anomaly in modern Indonesia, where all other posts from villages heads to the president are now elected by popular vote. It must be added though that in 2010 a proposal by the central government to allow the governor of Yogyakarta to be elected by the people was met with angry protests by Yogyakartans, ready to fight to remain disenfranchised.
The sultan, who is a consummate politician, rejected the idea of enforcing a full lockdown in the city from the start, saying that it would have "very serious consequences", supposedly for people's livelihoods. At the end of March, he gave a speech inviting people to "calm down" since there was no "lockdown" (he used the English terms). At the same time, he invited people to stay home if they could, avoid crowds and wash their hands. At least he didn't call for achieving "herd immunity".
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| His majesty the Sultan of Yogyakarta announcing that there will not be a lockdown on the 23rd of March |
Perhaps as a result of this stance, the measures taken in this city have been relatively lax. While schools are closed and people are encouraged to work from home, shops and restaurants have not been forced to close. There certainly are a lot of shuttered shopfronts around the city, but a fair number of businesses are still open. Shopping malls take people's temperatures at the entrance, but they have remained open too. And while a lot of restaurants are only doing deliveries, there are still a fair number of places that allow customers to sit down and eat. The fancier restaurants try and implement social distancing measures, but there are plenty of roadside stalls that seem to be operating as they always do.
People are free to walk or drive anywhere within the city without restrictions. Masks are not mandatory, and while a lot of people wear them, there are plenty of others who don't bother. This is in contrast with many other Asian countries, where walking around without a mask has by now become taboo or even illegal.
This is not to say that life here has gone on as normal, by any means. Much of economic activity has ground to a halt. Being able to work from home is a luxury for the few. Just like everywhere else in the world, a lot of people have lost their livelihoods. In Indonesia, a middle-income country where millions still eke out a living in informal jobs with little savings, this spells disaster for many. While the rural masses can live off the land to some degree, the urban poor have little to fall back on. Here in Yogyakarta, various charities have sprung up to deliver food to vulnerable families who are having trouble putting food on the table. Petty theft is also on the increase.
Yogyakarta's thriving tourist industry has been completely gutted. The city usually receives a constant flow of tourists from within Indonesia and from other countries, because of its cultural importance and its proximity to the ruins of Borobudur. But now Malioboro, a major shopping street and nightlife centre that is usually teeming with visitors, looks like a ghost town.
Indonesia suspended "visa on arrival" schemes in March, essentially banning all foreign tourism. At the same time, the authorities have announced that any foreigners already in the country will be allowed to stay "until the pandemic is over", regardless of whether their visa has expired. This has been convenient for me, since I would not normally be allowed to stay here longer than two months at a time. At the end of March the British and US governments encouraged any of their citizens still in Indonesia to return home, although those two countries are hardly the ideal places to be waiting out this pandemic. Unwilling to go back to Europe, and for the time being unable to go back to China, I decided to stay put.
Two months later, I am still here. Some of the worst predictions have not come to pass. Indonesia has not seen hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the health services have not collapsed. The official figure is 1351 deaths, although no one believes that the government's statistics are accurate. Indonesia's rate of testing is very low, and only people who died after testing positive are counted as coronavirus casualties. Figures for "excess" funerals in Jakarta over the last few months point to thousands of victims, including unfortunately many doctors and nurses. This is tragic, but still better than the picture in most Western countries, especially when you consider that Indonesia has 267 million people. While there has been much criticism of the state's handling of the situation, I can see that it is extremely tough to balance the need to stop a dangerous virus from ripping through communities, and the need to allow people to make a living in a country where the poor have few savings.
Yogyakarta's thriving tourist industry has been completely gutted. The city usually receives a constant flow of tourists from within Indonesia and from other countries, because of its cultural importance and its proximity to the ruins of Borobudur. But now Malioboro, a major shopping street and nightlife centre that is usually teeming with visitors, looks like a ghost town.
Indonesia suspended "visa on arrival" schemes in March, essentially banning all foreign tourism. At the same time, the authorities have announced that any foreigners already in the country will be allowed to stay "until the pandemic is over", regardless of whether their visa has expired. This has been convenient for me, since I would not normally be allowed to stay here longer than two months at a time. At the end of March the British and US governments encouraged any of their citizens still in Indonesia to return home, although those two countries are hardly the ideal places to be waiting out this pandemic. Unwilling to go back to Europe, and for the time being unable to go back to China, I decided to stay put.
Two months later, I am still here. Some of the worst predictions have not come to pass. Indonesia has not seen hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the health services have not collapsed. The official figure is 1351 deaths, although no one believes that the government's statistics are accurate. Indonesia's rate of testing is very low, and only people who died after testing positive are counted as coronavirus casualties. Figures for "excess" funerals in Jakarta over the last few months point to thousands of victims, including unfortunately many doctors and nurses. This is tragic, but still better than the picture in most Western countries, especially when you consider that Indonesia has 267 million people. While there has been much criticism of the state's handling of the situation, I can see that it is extremely tough to balance the need to stop a dangerous virus from ripping through communities, and the need to allow people to make a living in a country where the poor have few savings.
Here in Yogyakarta there have officially been 225 confirmed cases and eight deaths. Even if the true figures are higher, there certainly doesn't seem to have been a huge wave of cases overwhelming the hospitals and filling up the morgues. Perhaps for this reason, or maybe because they are bored of being stuck indoors and need to make a living, people are starting to go out again. For much of April traffic was down to about 10 - 20% of its normal flow, and the streets were almost deserted. While things are certainly not back to where they were before the pandemic, over the last few weeks the streets have come alive again, and in some places you would struggle to believe anything out of the ordinary was going on. It is as if the people have unilaterally declared the end of a lockdown that was never really enforced in the first place.
On top of everything else, today is the start of Lebaran, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. As I write these words, the takbir (Allahu Akbar) is drifting in through my window from the loudspeakers of dozens of mosques, as is tradition on the first night of the holiday. In Indonesia this holiday is normally preceded by the mudik, a mass migration comparable to China's spring festival rush, if smaller in scale. In order to stop scores of migrant workers from going home to their villages and carrying the infection to every last corner of the country, at the end of April the government suspended all inter-provincial travel with only a day's notice (they have now allowed travel for work purposes). This measure has probably left millions of jobless and frustrated migrants stuck in Jakarta's massive urban sprawl. On the other hand it may have stopped the virus from spreading more widely around the nation, in a country which just cannot deal with massive rates of infection.
On top of everything else, today is the start of Lebaran, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. As I write these words, the takbir (Allahu Akbar) is drifting in through my window from the loudspeakers of dozens of mosques, as is tradition on the first night of the holiday. In Indonesia this holiday is normally preceded by the mudik, a mass migration comparable to China's spring festival rush, if smaller in scale. In order to stop scores of migrant workers from going home to their villages and carrying the infection to every last corner of the country, at the end of April the government suspended all inter-provincial travel with only a day's notice (they have now allowed travel for work purposes). This measure has probably left millions of jobless and frustrated migrants stuck in Jakarta's massive urban sprawl. On the other hand it may have stopped the virus from spreading more widely around the nation, in a country which just cannot deal with massive rates of infection.
This whole situation has left a strange feel to life in Yogyakarta. It is currently quite hard to get in or out, but in many ways life in the city can feel almost normal. In the backstreets, neighbours huddle together and chat without bothering with masks or social distancing (but then you will see a family of three riding around on one scooter with no helmets, but wearing face masks just to be on the safe side). Peasants sell their vegetables on the side of the road, while buskers with guitars perform at traffic lights. Some bars are even open, but they limit the number of patrons and keep the tables far apart.
One thing that has struck me about the situation is the way that many suburban communities or Kampung, a term that refers to a village but also a kind of self-contained neighbourhood, have blocked off the entrances to their streets with barriers of various kinds, in an attempt to stop outsiders from entering and infecting people. Some of the barriers have an "official" look, but others are quite clearly set up by the residents. Some have banners with slogans scrawled across them, or with information on how to protect yourself from Covid-19. This mirrors the way that many Chinese villages unilaterally blocked themselves off from the outside world in February, when the pandemic was at its peak in China. Last week I walked around a bit in the northern outskirts of Yogyakarta and took photos of a few of these impromptu barricades, which you can see below.
One thing that has struck me about the situation is the way that many suburban communities or Kampung, a term that refers to a village but also a kind of self-contained neighbourhood, have blocked off the entrances to their streets with barriers of various kinds, in an attempt to stop outsiders from entering and infecting people. Some of the barriers have an "official" look, but others are quite clearly set up by the residents. Some have banners with slogans scrawled across them, or with information on how to protect yourself from Covid-19. This mirrors the way that many Chinese villages unilaterally blocked themselves off from the outside world in February, when the pandemic was at its peak in China. Last week I walked around a bit in the northern outskirts of Yogyakarta and took photos of a few of these impromptu barricades, which you can see below.
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| Two men play chess on the pavement, with their face masks pulled down |
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| The staff at a jewellery store in a shopping mall, wearing masks and protective gear |
