Ahead: Singapore broke the circuit breaker

Malaysia's fresh Rohingya scandal

June 22, 2020

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See you later in the week!Erin Cook

Getting back to business in Singapore (c/o Roberto Trombetta on Flickr)

🇸🇬 Peeking out to the new normal

  • Singapore has just entered Phase 2 of relaxing restrictions from the Circuit Break period, but not everyone is readjusting easily. After weeks of intense social distancing policy, the reopening has sparked feelings of anxiety and stress.

  • “One of the key factors here is that people will start to feel like they are losing control over their environment once they are forced to re-enter society. The less control there is, the more anxiety there will be. When the uncertainty hits a certain level, where it throws your day to day functioning off, it causes a lot of psychological strain,” Praveen Nair, a psychologist at Raven Counselling and Consultancy, told Today.

🇲🇾 Malaysia’s leaky boat

  • Malaysia could be planning to send 300 Rohingya detainees back to sea after fixing up a boat, Reuters reported late last week. Unidentified security sources say the boat would be loaded up with freshwater and other supplies, but rights groups have said the plan is ‘inhumane’. The body of one woman was found on the boat after it had been intercepted by Malaysian authorities, but others are believed to have died on board earlier. The boat had been intercepted in Langkawi on June 8 after departing Bangladesh.

  • Rights groups have slammed the plan since it was reported. “The Malaysian government should publicly affirm that the refugees brought ashore in early June will not be sent back out to sea,” John Quinley of Fortify Rights told FMT.

🇰🇭 (Expensive) Holiday in Cambodia

  • How desperate are you to get moving? Cambodia will allow visitors in now if they’re willing to put down a US$3,000 deposit. Mandatory testing and a 24-hour quarantine will be funded by part of that fee, while proof of insurance valued at $50,000 must be presented. If any passengers on your flight test positive for the virus you then have to pay up for the two-week quarantine. And if you die from COVID-19 while in Cambodia? That’s half your deposit gone.

🇹🇭 Winning the battle as a new war rages

  • Sunday is the 27th consecutive day Thailand has had no reported community transmissions of COVID-19. The country added just one new case to its toll on Sunday — a child who has recently returned from South Africa with his mother.

  • But as the public health crisis appears to recede, the economic and mental health crises is only deepening. This from NPR takes a comprehensive look at how this is playing out already, including a stunning conversation with a rescue volunteer. And the photos are great too.

🇮🇩 This blows

  • Here she goes again! Mount Merapi, the biggie volcano in Central Java which looms over Yogyakarta, erupted twice Sunday. “The current danger is hot clouds rolling down from the peak and other volcanic material from an explosive eruption,” the Yogyakarta Geological Disaster Technology Research and Development Center said in a statement.

  • Residents around the volcano have been told to keep an eye out for ash and even maybe lava flow, while the official warning system is currently at the second-highest level. An eruption back in 2010 left 300 dead.

The reading list

When Spike Lee’s newest movie was announced last year, I had high hopes. Knowing that it was filmed here in Saigon with some portions in Thailand, I looked forward to seeing contemporary Vietnam depicted in a major Hollywood movie — and not just as a stand-in for a fictional place as in Kong: Skull Island.

“These people wanted to bury the body without COVID-19 protocols, because they don’t want [to acknowledge] anyone in their area to be exposed to COVID-19,” Syaiful Hidayat, leader of the COVID-19 task force leader at Smart Pamekasan Regional Hospital, told the media.

As extreme as the incident in East Java may seem, it’s only one of a string of cases in which people forcibly recovered the bodies of family members who died of COVID-19, determined to bury them without the mandated protocols.

I, for one, am a storyteller. What I do is I incorporate current events or matters of public interest in the songs I perform. By carefully listening to the lyrics of a song, I weave its meaning to my stand on social issues. People may say it’s a political agenda, or that I’m biased or off-putting, but that’s what art does. It’s meant to provoke and challenge ideologies…

Human rights should never be a collateral damage. It is not the law itself that puts the people at risk. It’s the integrity and morality of those enforcing it that predisposes people to danger and makes them fear for their lives. Why would we trust such absolute power to this government?

The union leader says she is aware of cases of domestic workers who were fired after they experienced some symptoms similar to those of Covid-19, although they have not tested positive. She has also come across workers whose salaries were not paid during the quarantine.

“Domestic workers are being placed in a vulnerable situation – put under quarantine and not paid. Many don’t want to complain because they don’t want to be terminated and some are not aware of their rights,” Sringatin says.

Others have to deal with technological and language barriers that prevent them from understanding the instructions given by authorities.

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