Indonesia Bans Eid Travel for All to Curb COVID-19 Spread

Indonesia’s president on Tuesday announced a travel ban for all citizens who plan to go home for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, as the government widened restrictions on people’s movements during the upcoming Ramadan season because of the coronavirus outbreak.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had previously ordered all civil servants and security-force members not to travel home to celebrate the holiday that marks the Muslim holy month of fasting, citing a need to contain the nationwide spread of COVID-19. Ramadan in Indonesia is expected to begin on Thursday, depending on the sighting of a new moon.

“I would like to announce that mudik will be banned entirely,” Jokowi told a cabinet meeting, using the local term for the mass exodus from Jakarta and other big Indonesian cities, where at least 15 million people traditionally head home for Eid. “I’m asking that details for the measure be hammered out.”

Violations of Indonesia’s law on epidemics can carry a fine of up to 100 million rupiah (U.S. $6,425) and up to a year in jail. The 2018 law has not been enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic so far, according to officials.

Eid al-Fitr this year is expected to fall on May 23 or 24.

The Indonesian Council of Ulema, the country’s leading authority on Islamic affairs, earlier this month urged Indonesian Muslims not to travel for Eid, saying to do so during a pandemic would be a sin.

Jokowi’s announcement came on the same day that officials reported 375 new COVID-19 cases and 26 deaths, bringing the totals to 7,135 and 616. Indonesia has the highest death toll in East Asia outside of China.

Globally, more than 2.5 million infections have been recorded while the death toll stood at more than 171,800 as of Tuesday, according to data compiled by disease experts at U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

Students infected

Meanwhile in Malaysia, Health Director General Noor Hisham Abdullah said his ministry had detected a COVID-19 cluster involving 43 students, who were quarantined after returning from an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia’s East Java province.

Indonesian authorities in East Java’s Magetan regency said they were preparing a building to isolate students at the Al-Fatah Islamic boarding school in Temboro who may have had contact with the Malaysian students.

Elsewhere in Indonesia on Tuesday, six people found guilty of violating Sharia law in the staunchly Muslim province of Aceh were caned, an official said.

Unlike previous sessions, the event was held in a building at a park in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, to avoid attracting crowds who could spread the coronavirus, said the city’s Sharia police chief, Muhammad Hidayat.

“We applied the prescribed health protocol and did not allow the public to see the punishment, with only family members (of the convicts) attending,” he told BenarNews, adding that those present were required to observe social distancing and wear masks.

An unmarried couple who were found guilty of being intimate in a hotel each received 27 lashes, Hidayat said, adding that four others had each received 40 lashes after being found guilty of drinking alcohol.

Aceh is the only Indonesian province allowed to implement Sharia law as part of an autonomy scheme designed to mollify desires for independence.

Sharia law regulates khalwat (a man and a woman who are not related or married being alone together), gambling, drinking and selling liquor, sex outside marriage, rape, sexual harassment and homosexual sex.

In April 2018, then-Aceh governor Irwandi Yusuf issued a regulation that canings be carried out inside prisons. He said the move would reduce international uproar over the practice.

Noah Lee in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.