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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Coronavirus survivors: they said we brought the plague to Indonesia, say country’s first patients

  • Ratri Anindyajati suffered a torrent of abuse on social media after she, her sister and her mother became the first Indonesians to catch Covid-19
  • People compared the three to prostitutes because they ‘liked to dance’. Since her ordeal, Ratri has become an Instagram ambassador for positivity

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(L-R) Ratri Anindyajati, Maria Darmaningsih and Sita Tyasutami were the first three people in Indonesia to have the coronavirus. Photo: Handout
Randy Mulyanto
Ratri Anindyajati had plenty of things to worry about when she, her sister and her mother became the first three people in Indonesia to catch the coronavirus. Little did she know that personal abuse and social stigma would be among them.
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But that was exactly what came her way after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo revealed to a stunned nation on March 2 that Indonesia had recorded its first two infections. Though he did not name the victims, their details soon leaked out; Anindyajati’s younger sister Sita Tyasutami and her mother Maria Darmaningsih were cases one and two.

The announcement was like a bombshell to many Indonesians, the shock made greater by the fact that their government had at the time still been downplaying the threat of the virus (on grounds it would later justify as “not wanting to spread panic”). Many responded by blaming the women themselves.

Ratri Anindyajati. Courtesy of Ratri Anindyajati
Ratri Anindyajati. Courtesy of Ratri Anindyajati
Soon people they had never met were blaming them for “bringing the plague” into the country and insulting them on social media, questioning their virtue with slanderous remarks about how they “liked to dance in nightclubs” and insinuating they were prostitutes.
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The vitriol shocked and saddened Anindyajati, who said the three of them were “easy targets”, first because they were women, and second because they were involved in the dance industry: Anindyajati, 33, is an independent arts producer and a traditional Javanese dancer; Tyasutami, 31, is a performing arts manager and dance instructor; and Darmaningsih, 64, is a lecturer at the Jakarta Institute of Arts and a trained contemporary and classical Javanese dancer.

Ratri Anindyajati doing a traditional Javanese dance. Photo: Handout
Ratri Anindyajati doing a traditional Javanese dance. Photo: Handout
SCMP Series
The survivors of Covid-19
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