Indonesia Highlights: Time is Running Out for Efforts to Find Missing Indonesian Submarine | 454 Indians Entered Indonesia’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport in April 2021| Philippine, Thailand Leaders No-Shows

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – Indonesia’s hopes of finding one the missing navy submarine KRI Nanggala-402 is fading fast, as Indonesian naval vessels and their foreign counterparts have yet to find the vessel, more than three days after it went missing off the northern coast of Bali.

Immigration officials in Indonesia’s biggest airport, Soekarno Hatta International Airport, revealed that more than 450 Indian nationals headed to Indonesia after the number of cases in the country surged.

And ASEAN’s chances to form a united front to resolve the crisis in Myanmar following the country’s military coup last February is thrown into doubt, as the leaders of the Philippines and Thailand failed to show for the Association’s summit on the crisis in Jakarta this Saturday.

This and more on Indonesia Highlights:

KOMPAS/CYPRIANUS ANTO SAPTOWALYONO The Indonesian Navy Submarine KRI Nanggala-402 enters the Indah Kiat docks in the port city of Cilegon in Banten province in this file photo. The KRI Nanggala-402 has gone missing during exercises off the northern coast of Bali on Wednesday (21/4/2021)

Time is Running Out for Efforts to Find Missing Indonesian Submarine

The Indonesian military or TNI’s hopes of finding the Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala-402 is fading fast, as the vessel’s oxygen reserves is estimated to run out on Saturday, April 24.

Indonesian Navy vessels and their foreign counterparts scouring waters off the northern coast of Bali have yet to find the German-made attack submarine as of 3 in the morning of Saturday, April 24. 

The Indonesian military is currently focusing its hopes to find a breakthrough in the search on the Celukan Bawang Bali maritime gap.

“We have found nine points that might give away [KRI Nanggala-402’s] location 40 kilometers south of Celukan Bawang, where we found oil spills as well as strong magnetic fields,” said TNI spokesman Major General Achmad Riad on Friday.

Indonesian Navy vessels mustered to search for KRI Nanggala-402, among them the KRI Dr. Soeharso-990, KRI Rimau and the brand new submarine KRI Alugoro-405, will be joined by the Singaporean Navy submarine rescue ship MV Swift Rescue.

The United States also ordered the US Air Force reconnaissance P-8 aircraft to search for the KRI Nanggala-402, which is thought to sink to a depth of 600 to 700 meters. The US aircraft is thought to arrive in the early hours of Saturday, April 24.

The KRI Nanggala-402 was manufactured in 1979 at the Howaldt Deutsche Werke (HDW) shipyards in the port city of Kiel in the then-country of West Germany. The submarine has been part of Indonesia’s arsenal since 1981.

The aging ship was also upgraded at South Korean shipyards run by the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, South Korea between 2009-2012.

Source:

https://go.kompas.com/read/2021/04/24/074802374/time-is-running-out-for-efforts-to-find-missing-indonesian-submarine?page=all#page2. 

AP PHOTO/RAJESH KUMAR SINGH People stand in queues to cast their votes during local elections in Kunvarpur village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Thursday, April 15, 2021. India reported more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases, skyrocketing past 14 million overall as an intensifying outbreak puts a grim weight on its fragile health care system. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

454 Indians Entered Indonesia’s Soekarno-Hatta Airport in April 2021

Immigration officials at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport has revealed that nearly 500 Indian nationals have entered Indonesia in mid-April, as a third wave of Covid-19 cases pushed the country’s sources to breaking point.

“454 Indian citizens have entered Indonesia through Soekarno-Hatta Airport between April 11 to 22,” said Romi Yudianto, the head of the Airport’s Immigration Office.

“Of this number, 244 have admission visas, 69 have Temporary Stay Permit Cards, while 23 of them have Permanent Stay Permit Cards. Another 52 Indian nationals have Temporary Stay Visas, while 66 of them manned heavy equipment.”

Romi cited the figures after the arrival of two flights from the country bringing 244 Indian nationals last Wednesday raised fears among Indonesian politicians and the public that the ‘tsunami’ of Covid-19 cases sweeping India will overwhelm Indonesia next.

“The Indian nationals and others that make up the 117 passengers on Air Asia flight XZ988 from India confirmed that the Covid-19 pandemic there has turned into a serious health crisis. The Covid-19 strain plaguing the country is of the B.1617 strain that can quickly mutate,” he noted.

Romi asserted that another 132 Indian citizens arrived on flight QZ9BB, a chartered flights from the MMA airline. “I can assure that officials [in Soekarno Hatta Airport] is tightly monitoring their arrival, and have applied PCR tests to them.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Ministry of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin pointed out that at least 12 of the Indian nationals tested positive for Covid-19.

“The [Indian citizens] tested positive after [Indonesian health officials] carried out whole genome sequencing to determine the Covid-19 variant that they are carrying,” he said.

The Indonesian government will bar foreign travelers who have been in India over the past 14 days from entering Indonesia, after a recent surge of Covid-19 cases in the country saw more than 300 thousand people contract the virus on a daily basis.

Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto, who doubles as chairman of Indonesia’s Covid-19 Mitigation and National Economic Recovery (KPC-PEN) Committee, noted that the ban will apply from 25 April.

 India officially has more than 14 million Covid-19 cases. 184 thousand Indians have died of the coronavirus since it was first detected last year.

Source:

https://go.kompas.com/read/2021/04/24/064455774/454-indians-entered-indonesias-soekarno-hatta-airport-in-april-2021?page=all#page2. 

REUTERS via BBC INDONESIA Civilian protesters hold up Join in (the) CDM (Civil Disobedience Movement) banners in front of a soldier in Yangon, Myanmar

Philippine, Thailand Leaders No-Shows At Jakarta ASEAN Summit

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha have announced that they will not attend the ASEAN summit in Jakarta which will be convened on Saturday, April 24.

The Philippine government said Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. will represent Duterte at the meeting, citing “pressing domestic concerns,” over a surge of Covid-19 cases in the country.

Thailand also confirmed that Prime Minister Prayuth will not attend the ASEAN summit. The Thai government said he will be represented by Deputy Prime Minister Don Pramudwinai, who is also the country’s Foreign Minister.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hoped ASEAN can resolve the Myanmar crisis, and warned that failure to do so could bring about grim consequences. "Inappropriate intervention from outside the [Southeast Asia] should be avoided,” he asserted.

"[Previous cases] has proved that blindly exerting strong pressure by foreign forces will not help resolve a country's internal problems, but will bring turbulence or even deterioration to the situation, which will affect and destabilise the region."

China is not an ASEAN member, but a member of the ASEAN Plus Three organization, along with Japan and South Korea. The country, which is a known backer of Myanmar’s military junta, has yet to confirm whether it will attend the ASEAN Summit on Myanmar in Jakarta.

The head of Myanmar’s military junta, General Min Aung Hlaing, has confirmed last Wednesday that he will attend the ASEAN summit. ASEAN has been hampered from taking a more firm approach to resolve the Myanmar crisis by the Association’s policy of non-intervention in member states’ domestic affairs.

Myanmar’s crisis came about on February 1 after the military junta arrested the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and overthrew the democracy icon’s government after her National League of Democracy [NLD] party beat military sponsored parties by a landslide last November.

The military cracked down on the opposition, by killing more than 700 people and imprisoning thousands of others, after they protested the military coup over the past two months.

Source:

https://go.kompas.com/read/2021/04/23/235101274/philippine-thailand-leaders-no-shows-at-jakarta-asean-summit?page=all#page2.