COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: much more than a health crisis

Abstract

COVID-19 in Southeat Asia - Much more than a health crisis

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COVID-19 in Southeast Asia:
much more than a health crisis
Agustus 21, 2021 1.38pm WIB
Penulis
1. Gabriel Facal
Postdoc, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)
2. Ian Wilson
Senior Lecturer, Politics and Security Studies, Murdoch University
3. Khoo Ying Hooi
Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Malaya
4. Rosalia Sciortino

Associate Professor on Population and Social Research, Mahidol University
5. Sarah Andrieu
Associate researcher, Centre Asie du sud-est (CASE), École des hautes études en sciences
sociales (EHESS)
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A demonstrator flashes the three-finger salute during a protest against the military coup in Mandalay,
Myanmar, in early May. EPA
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COVID-19 cases have risen exponentially in Southeast Asia in the past few
months – at one time deaths were increasing at the fastest pace in the
world. With the advance of the Delta variant, the region and its 655 million
population have now become a pandemic hotspot due to geographical,
political and socioeconomic factors.
As elsewhere in the globe, the pandemic in Southeast Asia reveals systemic
malfunctions.
It underlines, among other things, that states give priority to economics
over damage to the environment and rapidly increasing health disasters in
the region.
Political top-down governance and the rising challenges to civil society
actors make it even more difficult for Southeast Asian citizens to engage
with governments choose to address these crises.
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Unveiling the systemic dimension of the crisis

In Southeast Asia, the many social and cultural dimensions of the pandemic
have become obscure. The voices of humanities and social science experts
and even public health specialists seem subdued.
Governments have implemented measures top-down without much
discussion of whether these suit the context or of the implications and
impacts. Yet, this crisis is complex and systemic. It needs to be dissected
from a number of angles.
First, the socioeconomic and political drivers of the epidemic need to be
better understood and addressed.
The region’s governments keep encouraging the pursuit of incessant
economic growth. In doing so, they dismiss alternative arrangements that
would reduce inequities in society and promote sustainability of natural
resources.
In dealing with the impacts of the pandemic, short-term relief is no
substitute for the much-needed strengthening of social protections and the
introduction of redistribution mechanisms.
Communities across the region are harnessing their cultural and social
capital to cope with the unprecedented limits COVID-19 has placed on their
daily lives and livelihoods. They try to foster a collective culture of resilience
in often constrained settings. But they get little attention or support from
government institutions.
All this requires open public discussion and transparent decision-making.
Instead, we have seen a shrinking of civic space. There has been a focus on
security measures and invasive technologies in the name of health safety.
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Indonesian physicians call for unity against COVID-19
Connecting pandemic politics and human rights
Southeast Asia is characterised by a majority of authoritarian or partial
democracy governments.
The health crisis is affording these regimes the opportunity to further
suppress political dissent and consolidate their power.
The weight of oligarchies and particularly state finance elites is shaping
governmental orientations.

Governments tend to transform health and social issues into security
matters that require extraordinary means of securitisation, weaponisation
and militarisation. We see this happening in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia
and the Philippines.
These measures are done through different methods including surveillance
and the criminalising of the population. In particular, minority groups and
vulnerable populations, from refugees and migrants to religious
communities, are being scapegoated.
The use of technology for contact tracing creates ambiguity about the
protection of individual rights and the collective right to health. It resonates
with the restriction of civil liberties such as freedom of expression, freedom
of the press and freedom of information as we see in Cambodia, Thailand
and, brutally, in Myanmar.
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unreliable and how to fix them
Local systems of solidarity
Faced with these authoritarian trends, Southeast Asian populations rely
on localised, confidential or invisible arrangements to care and sustain the
local economy and their systems of material solidarity.
The crisis has devastating impacts on the hundreds of thousands who make
a living from the informal street economy. A study of Jakarta’s urban
poor shows both their resilience in the face of government inaction and the
high risks they endured for basic survival.
The first of these risks is to their health due to extremely low levels of
testing and unequal access to protective gear.
Rapid unravelling of what was already a precarious life in the Indonesian
capital leaves many people with little choice. Many return to home towns
and villages across the country. Some likely bring the virus with them.
The poor are also vulnerable to loan sharks. They are capitalising on
people’s needs for quick cash, adding to often already crippling debts.
Government inaction and the combined threats of disease and economic
ruin mean the population has to rely on themselves and each other to
survive.

They develop networks of mutual support and self-organisation to provide
collective protection.
However, as the impacts of social distancing and shutdowns take hold,
social and economic opportunities shrink even further. Self-help networks
alone are then not enough.
In Indonesia, like in other Southeast Asian countries, substantive
government intervention is needed immediately to enable the poor
population to get through this crisis.
The poor are in dire need of rapid testing, sufficient and ongoing food
staples, cash subsidies free of red tape, basic infrastructure like clean water
supplies, and moratoriums on evictions and debt repayments. Without
these measures, they will suffer the greatest impacts of the pandemic.
Baca juga: How Indonesian young creative workers in
Yogyakarta stay productive amid the pandemic
The human dimension of the crisis
Analysis shows that the difficulties in managing the pandemic in Southeast
Asia are essentially institutional. The crisis is revealing structural
malfunctions that are mainly linked to particular interests of elites and
disengagement of large portions of the population.
Thus, the challenge for civil society is to unveil and address the human
dimension of the crisis: the continuum between relentless extraction that
damages the environment, blind greed for economic profit, and politics that
prevents people from taking control over their common destiny.
This perspective poses the question of how to act collectively to overcome
this pandemic and to protect the common good for the benefit of future
generations.