Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population in the world, has seen almost all her national security agencies being heavily involved in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. The government is filled with retired military and police general officers, most of whom have leading roles in the government’s Covid-19 Task Force. The Task Force itself is filled with active duty military and police officers.
The Armed Forces (TNI)’s supposed role in the pandemic response is to provide military assets to support in term of logistics, supply, and transport. Later, they became the administrator of Covid-19 Emergency Hospitals in Kamayoran, Jakarta and Galang Island, Riau Islands. Meanwhile, the Police (POLRI)’s role in the pandemic response is to enforce social distancing and other mitigation measures. However, their role soon extended to crackdowns against criticism of the government. By June 15 2020, they are already investigating 130,680 coronavirus-related hoaxes, have arrested 17 suspects, and are prosecuting 87 suspects.
Compared to TNI and POLRI, the extended role of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) is arguably the most problematic. BIN’s role is to conduct contact tracing to track the spread of Covid-19, as part of the early warning system as what an intelligence service should do. However, theirs has extended to everything related to the pandemic…
