• Worldwide, there is an increasing proportion of people who are joining the anti-maskers group.
• There are protests and rallies held against the use of mandatory face masks in public places.
• Politics and religion have jumped in to influence people against the use of face masks.

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To avoid the spread of such wrong messages, authorities of countries such as Indonesia decided to take some steps to halt it.

Recently, Indonesian authorities punished a group of anti-maskers. These violators had to dig graves for people of COVID-19 who died!

Indonesia and its stringent laws and punishment for anti-maskers

There was a group of anti-maskers who broke the current rule of mandatory face masks in public in Indonesia. Indonesian authorities caught them. But they did not let them go scot-free or with just warnings.

The group of eight men had to dig graves for the patients of CIVID-19 who expired. These people had to do manual labor at the local cemetery as a punishment for not wearing masks in public.

The East Java officials served this punishment on the violators so that other people will deter from repeating this offense, The Jakarta Post has reported.

More about this punishment and its utility

Additionally, the local media stated that this type of punishment also assisted the local professional gravediggers. The latter has been tirelessly working day and night. Due to the rising number of deaths from the deadly virus, the work burden also overwhelmed the gravediggers.

The politician Suyono told the local paper:

“There are only three available gravediggers at the moment, so I thought I might as well put these people to work with them,”

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The smart politician added:

“Hopefully this can create a deterrent effect against violations,”

But the officials were still considerate of these lawbreakers. They did not make them handle the infected corpses. The people who were wearing protective gear to avoid COVID-19 exposure handled the dead bodies.

The other punishments for the anti-maskers

Just one week back, a similar situation arose. And the police arrested the lawbreakers and forced them to sit in a hearse carrying a casket. Once inside the hearse, the officials again questioned the violators about their actions.

The officials then informed and made them aware of the increasing deaths due to the virus. They trained them on the benefits of masks against the transmission of the virus.

Some 50 people from Maron Market who were without masks had to sit inside the hearse as a form of social punishment on 7 September 2020.

The law enforcement co-ordinator Ugas Irwanto announced:

“We ordered vendors to close down their shop for a week, confiscated violators’ IDs for three months, and asked some of them to clean the market and open sewers,”

Indonesia has reported over 225k cases of coronavirus. 161k of these have recovered and there have been around 9000 deaths. Jakarta is the worst affected followed by East Java and Central Java.

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