Asia News fra SCMP

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo on Monday said he planned to implement stricter rules on mobility and social distancing, as thousands of people stream back to the country’s provinces from Jakarta, the epicentre of the country’s coronavirus outbreak. “I’m [now] ordering large-scale social limits, physical distancing needs to be done more sternly, more disciplined, and effectively,” Widodo told a cabinet meeting, stressing that only the central government could decide on regional quarantines. …

Myanmar’s health minister has urged the public to brace for a “big outbreak” of the new coronavirus, saying that migrant workers who returned from neighbouring Thailand in large numbers may set it off.Myint Htwe’s warning in a statement issued around midnight Sunday comes as Myanmar reported earlier in the day two more cases of Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, bringing the country’s total to 10 cases within a week since the first case was reported.The minister said more than 23,000…

More developing countries have imposed lockdowns as the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection soared in the last week. India has been under an unprecedented nationwide lockdown since March 25, with the country’s 1.3 billion people ordered to stay at home for at least 21 days. South Africa started a three-week lockdown on March 27 and brought in the military to ensure it is enforced. In Indonesia, President Joko Widodo, commonly known as Jokowi, so far has resisted calls to impose a…

It was the day of India’s janata (people’s) curfew that foreshadowed a more sweeping nationwide lockdown, and at the request of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indians across the country took to their doorways and balconies to applaud and bang kitchenware in a show of solidarity with the nation’s health care workers fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic.But in the northern state of Rajasthan, a senior resident doctor at Jodhpur’s Ummaid hospital had just been evicted from her home over fears…

Singapore’s High Court on Monday ruled that its colonial-era law criminalising sex between men was constitutional and would be retained, overturning a bid by three gay rights activists to scrap it.Singapore remains one of the few former British colonies still clinging to Section 377A of the Penal Code, which came into force in 1938 after being adapted from a 19th-century Indian penal code. India did away with the legislation in October 2018.One of the three activists, Bryan Choong, the former…

In small groups and large crowds, through inner-city lanes and down interstate motorways, hundreds of thousands of India’s poorest are slowly making a desperate journey on foot back to their villages in a mass exodus unseen since the days immediately after India’s independence in 1947.For many, it’s a matter of life and death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s order last Tuesday to lock down the country for 21 days to prevent the spread of Covid-19 has dried up work in urban areas, leaving many…

Another controversial religious sect in South Korea has come under public scrutiny with a cluster of at least 22 coronavirus cases, as some protestant churches went ahead with worship services on Sunday despite a government order for social distancing.Health authorities have been tracing close contacts of at least 200 church-goers after a member of the Manmin Central Church in Seoul’s western district of Guro tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday.As of Sunday afternoon, 22 people linked to…

While the coronavirus outbreak has left many people self-quarantining in flats of just a few hundred square feet, super-rich Asians have a more appealing option for refuge: their own private island. Sales agents say they have been flooded with enquiries from Asia’s wealthiest seeking an investment that can serve as both a bolt-hole from the raging pandemic and a long-term investment. What is more, while some of these private idylls sell for up to US$100 million, some go for as little as US$55…

In Southeast Asia, a region of some 655 million people, a humanitarian catastrophe looms as the Covid-19 pandemic advances and economies falter. The number of officially confirmed cases across the region is lower than the hardest-hit parts of the world. But these numbers are accelerating and the reported figures will represent only a fraction of the true number of infections. Even if the virus proves to do less well in warm climates, Southeast Asia has all the ingredients for larger-scale…

Singapore’s central bank took unprecedented easing steps Monday to support an economy on track for its worst recession in years due to the rapid global spread of the coronavirus.The Monetary Authority of Singapore, which uses the exchange rate as its main policy tool rather than a benchmark interest rate, recentered the currency band downwards and reduced the slope to zero. All economists surveyed by Reuters and Bloomberg this month expected the central bank to ease as policymakers worldwide…