Indonesia is making Anti Maskers dig graves for COVID-19 victims. As a punishment for violating Indonesian mask mandates, eight people who refused to wear face masks to combat the spread of COVID-19 were, in fact, ordered by a local official to dig graves, USA TODAY reported.
Leaders in Cerme, a district located in East Java, had set out stricter policies surrounding the enforcement of social distancing and mask-wearing due to a recent uptick in COVID-19 cases.
Indonesian news site Tribune News reported that Suyono, the leader of Cerme, proposed grave digging as a punishment to those who violated the local mask mandate due to a lack of gravediggers in the area.
“There are only three available gravediggers at the moment, so I thought I might as well put these people to work with them,” Suyono told Tribune News. “Hopefully, this can create a deterrent effect against violations.”
Suyono said two people were assigned to each grave, one to dig the grave and the other to insert wooden boards into the burial holes to support the corpses. However, the violators did not participate in the actual burials and were forbidden from touching the bodies, Australia SBS News reported. The task was left to health officials who were wearing proper protective equipment.
Those in Creme caught not wearing a mask have the option of accepting a fine of 150,000 rupiah, which is equivalent to $10 in the U.S., or accepting a “social punishment,” according to Suyono.
Suyono told CNN that while most people have accepted social punishments, such as push-ups or cleaning, he hopes grave digging would show “firsthand the real and serious effect of COVID-19” and added that none of the gravediggers were present when the bodies were buried.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Indonesia is the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak with the highest death toll in Southeast Asia. Mask-wearing ha been required since April 2021. On July 22, 2021 there were 1449 deaths in Indonesia and that is most certainly under reported. There have been over 3 million cases and over 30,000 deaths to date in the country.