Indonesia’s drug regulator (BPOM) said in a statement the syrups were not registered in the country.

Its health ministry said it is talking to experts from the WHO that are investigating the case in Gambia and it has formed a team with the country’s paediatric association (IDAI) and a Jakarta-based hospital to look into the cases.

It said the illness had infected 40 children across the country so far but didn’t say when the cases were first reported.

IDAI was quoted by Indonesian newspaper Kompas as saying 131 cases have been reported between January and September, adding the cases in Gambia are unrelated to those in Indonesia.

The health ministry said early findings point to potential intoxication as a cause of the illness, but no definitive cause has been found yet. The ministry said further research was needed.

Indian authorities said on Wednesday they found 12 violations of good practices at a factory of Maiden and halted production of cough syrups at the plant.

JAKARTA: The Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) and world football governing body FIFA will form a joint taskforce in a bid to improve crowd control and safety measures after a deadly football stampede earlier this month, officials said on Thursday (Oct 13).

Indonesian authorities are under pressure to take swift steps to overhaul football safety standards after more than 130 people died during a crowd crush at a match at the Kanjuruhan stadium in East Java on Oct 1, in one of the world’s worst stadium disasters.

Security experts have said the firing of tear gas by police inside the stadium, a measure prohibited by FIFA, triggered the fatal stampede.

“We agreed to form a taskforce, or football transformation taskforce, consisting of the government, FIFA, and experts in football, security, and stadiums,” PSSI head, Mochamad Iriawan, told reporters after a meeting with FIFA officials.

Under the plans, Indonesian police would ensure their standard operating procedures were synchronised with FIFA regulations, he said.

The joint taskforce will also include members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as well as the police and the ministries of sport, home affairs, health and public works.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, has said FIFA did not plan to sanction his country over the incident, but the rare intervention by the sport’s governing body comes as Indonesia is due to host the FIFA under-20 World Cup next year.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino is expected to visit Jakarta on Tuesday to meet with Jokowi, after which a joint commitment is due to be announced.

Infantino will also make a statement during a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in Bali in November about Indonesia’s readiness to host an international event, said Iriawan.

Six people including police and match organisers are facing criminal charges after the stampede, with the government highlighting lax safety measures, such as locked exit doors and an overcapacity stadium, as contributing factors.

Separately, the Indonesian minister of public works said that the Kanjuruhan stadium would be completely renovated after an audit of the site.

“IT MEANS A LOT”

The terrorist attack did not only affect Indonesians but also holidaymakers from 21 other nations. Some mourners flew all the way from countries like Australia and the United Kingdom to participate in the ceremony. Eighty-eight of the 202 victims were Australian, while 20 were from the UK.

Australian retiree Danny Hanley, who lost two daughters to the attack, said he has been coming to the annual commemoration every year except in 2020 and 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and international travel halted.

“I’m happy I’m here for the 20th (anniversary). It means a lot,” Mr Hanley told CNA. “Coming here has helped me all these 20 years. You get some respite from the pain. But you never get over it fully.

Mr Hanley brought with him a bouquet and a photograph of his two daughters to the site of the bombings in Bali’s popular tourist area of Kuta, where a monument made out of carved sandstone and marble now stands.

The retiree also left a note on the bouquet: “To our beautiful girls Renae & Simone. It is twenty years on and not a day has gone by without thinking of you both, and how we lost two treasures. Our hearts will cry for you forever.” 

The foot of the monument was covered with flowers, letters, photographs and candles on Wednesday morning. These items were left there by dozens of family members who had been visiting the monument since Monday.

Meanwhile, the predominantly Hindu Balinese community left flower offerings and incense at the monument after they made their prayers to the deceased.

On Oct 12, 2002, two bombs exploded within seconds apart at about 11pm on a busy Saturday evening.

The two suicide bombers responsible for pulling the trigger had targetted two locations which were roughly opposite each other: Paddy’s Pub and Sari Club. The two were at the time packed with local and international tourists.

It had done this in the religious violence in eastern Indonesia in the late 1990s, and communal strife was what JI had planned to foment within and between Singapore and Malaysia as well.  

This is why today’s various grassroots initiatives, ranging from the Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles (IRCCs) to the current SG Secure campaign, have been designed precisely to strengthen the social resilience of Singapore’s multicultural fabric in the event of a terror strike.

A RE-EMERGING THREAT

With the rise of social media today, the tech-savvy propagandists of the Islamic State – an Al-Qaeda offshoot and global rival – promote the current significant threat of self-radicalisation. Violent ideology can thrive in a vast online space that often makes monitoring a deadly cat and mouse game.

Even more recently, the relatively nascent challenge of far right extremism has emerged in Singapore as well.

Adding to the complexity of the threat picture, JI itself, following its near-decimation by regional security forces in the 2000s, is gradually re-emerging, emphasising not violence but rather low-key infiltration of societal and political institutions. Ominously, JI appears to retain regional ambitions.

Twenty years after Bali, the threat of transnational terrorism remains but continues to evolve. So does the need for continued vigilance and not taking our social resilience for granted.

Professor Kumar Ramakrishna is Associate Dean and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

BALI, Indonesia: It was a Saturday night and the row of nightclubs lining Bali’s Legian Road were crammed with club-goers as they danced the night away to the rapid beat of house music and colourful light shows.

The one-way thoroughfare, famous for its nightlife, was lined with cars and motorcycles while its pavements were filled with tourists hoping to paint the town red.

However, there were those who came for a more sinister reason. Three members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI)  terrorism network were there to launch an attack so calamitous it would be known as the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesia’s history.

One of the three was Ali Imron who was tasked with overseeing the attack. The other two served as the suicide bombers. 

Not much is known about the bombers other than the fact that they had many aliases and that the people involved in the attack referred to them as “Iqbal One” and “Iqbal Two”.

On Oct 12, 2002, Ali Imron instructed Iqbal One to carry a backpack filled with 1kg of explosives and make his way inside a crowded bar called Paddy’s Pub. 

Meanwhile, Iqbal Two was told to drive a white Mitsubishi van packed with hundreds of kilograms of explosives.

At around 11pm, Iqbal One pulled the trigger, killing several people instantly and injuring many others. Survivors recounted seeing a ball of fire engulfing the interior of the property, sending patrons scrambling for their lives.

BALI, Indonesia: As I Dewa Ketut Widia Putra’s car made its way through Legian Road, a narrow one-way thoroughfare in the popular tourist area of Kuta in Bali, traffic had ground to a standstill.

It was a Saturday night and Legian, a stretch known for nightclubs, bars and souvenir shops, was packed with tourists.

Unbeknownst to him, a suicide bomber armed with 1kg of explosives hidden inside his backpack had walked into a crowded pub called Paddy’s. He detonated the bomb just after 11pm on Oct 12, 2002, killing several people instantly and knocking out a nearby electricity pole.

Seconds later, another more powerful bomb exploded, this time from a white Mitsubishi van packed with hundreds of kilograms of explosives. The bomb was detonated as the van was passing a crowded nightclub named Sari, less than 20m from where Putra’s car was.

The shock wave from the second blast lifted Putra’s car up in the air and knocked him unconscious.

When he opened his eyes, he found that his clothes were torn to bits. His face and body was covered in blood as well as shards of glass from the broken windshield.

Putra suffered severe burns on his left arm and chest. He had to undergo an operation on his left eye which was damaged from the blast. It took him months before he recovered from his injuries. But even then, he had lost 20 per cent of his eyesight on his left eye.

The psychological trauma took a much longer time to heal.

“Hearing loud sounds used to terrify me. I used to hide whenever I heard fireworks on New Year’s Eve. It took me five years before I got over that fear,” the now 55-year-old said.

BALI, Indonesia: Mourners from across the world gathered in Bali on Tuesday (Oct 11), ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 2002 bombings as they paid tribute to the 202 people who lost their lives.

A commemoration event on Wednesday is expected to draw more than a hundred participants ranging from government officials, survivors of the attack as well as friends and families of those who were killed. There are also others who were permanently disabled and psychologically traumatised.

On Tuesday, the flags of 22 nations where the fallen victims originated were raised at the 2002 Bali Bombing Monument, which serves as the main venue for the commemoration.

Setyawan did not mind helping out and continued to do so while working as a village secretary in Paringan, which is located within Ponorogo regency. He married Lamini in 1998. 

In 2005, Setyawan had to stop volunteering. “I had to stop doing it cos I had tetanus,” he recounted. He almost died but eventually managed to recover. 

He told CNA that the near-death experience made him decide to dedicate his life to helping people with mental health problems. 

In 2007, someone asked Setyawan to pick up two men, aged 37 and 45, who had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital.

As their families did not welcome them back, Setyawan decided to take them home.

Lamini remembers being shocked when Setyawan came home with the strangers.

“To me, it was just strange. Why should we have them at our house? 

“We were still a young family and I wanted attention from my husband but was forced to share it with strangers.”

Eventually, she began to understand why Setyawan wanted to help.

“I realised that people who suffer from mental health problems also need attention, affection and love like us normal people,” Lamini recounted.

Setyawan added: “And now actually it is the other way around. She is the one who takes care of them.”

For the next 10 years, they took in mainly men who suffered from mental health issues.

But in 2017, they decided to house only women as Setywan started to take a step back due to health reasons and Lamini became the main caregiver. 

Setyawan and Lamini do not charge a fee for looking after those with mental health problems. However, most of the families give the couple a small token sum to help out with their expenses. 

When funds run low, the couple would draw from their savings. They have also received donations from the public. 

Margo Widodo can take care of 12 people at once.

Indonesia President Joko Widodo on Friday (Oct 7) said that football world governing body FIFA will not impose sanctions on the country over a stadium stampede last week that killed 131 people.

In a video message, the president said Indonesia would work with FIFA to improve its management of football matches and that FIFA president Gianni Infantino will visit Indonesia in October or November.

MALANG: Indonesian father Mochamad Munif looked at the grave of his young daughter, sprinkling petals across it before bending down to kiss the square white stone slab and utter the words he never wanted to.

“If you have done any mistakes to me, to your father, I forgive you,” he whispered to himself at a cemetery in the city of Malang as his second daughter and her grandmother cried next to him.

Munif, like so many others who lost loved ones in a stadium stampede at the weekend, was unable to comprehend how his 20-year-old daughter went to watch her first football match and came back dead.

Lutvia Damayanti was at the overcrowded game in Malang on Saturday that descended into tragedy when police tried to quell a pitch invasion by firing tear gas into packed stands, sending panicked spectators rushing for small or closed exits.

At least 131 people including 32 children died and hundreds more were injured in one of the deadliest disasters in football history.

The family still don’t know the circumstances of the daughter’s death, whether she died instantly or later in hospital, but Munif blames the police.

“Why should it (the tear gas) be fired at the stands?” he asked. “While supporters such as my daughter were not at fault?”

Many were killed by asphyxia after being pushed up against closed gates that became warped by the force of the crowd. Munif said his daughter’s face bore no marks of trauma.

He was renovating a house in the East Javan city of Surabaya when colleagues told him a deadly stampede had unfolded at the Kanjuruhan stadium in his hometown, a two-hour drive away. Then he got the call that every parent dreads.

His daughter was in an ambulance travelling to the family home in Malang, his younger brother told him by phone, after she had attended the derby between fierce Javan rivals Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya. His heart sank.

“I knew that if she was in an ambulance, she had already died,” the 47-year-old told AFP, recounting the moment that would change his life forever.

He cannot remember his journey home, one shrouded in a blur of grief.

When he arrived to find her body lying on the floor and a sheet was pulled back to reveal her face, he passed out.