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The Papua-Papua New Guinea Border Amid the Spread of the Covid-19 Virus

State borders are an important part of national sovereignty in maintaining integrity. To recognize a nation state it is necessary to know the boundaries of the country. State borders indicate ownership of a sovereign state including the potential within it and the threats that may arise over the territory of a country. Borders, especially state borders are one of the important aspects in geopolitics that separates people from two countries, namely natural, river, mountain and ethnic and linguistic boundaries and geometrically based on longitude and latitude (Marwasta, 2016). The country’s borders are undergoing many concept changes in their management due to globalization which raises many possibilities both economic revival and various threats including the spread of viruses in addition to drug smuggling, human smuggling and weapons.

The state in relation to border management in the midst of the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus has tightened guarding of the country’s border areas. Various national border entrances around the world are tightened guarded including the traffic of people and goods in the country’s border lanes. American Border in a Reuters release (Reuters, 2020) states that the Pentagon will send about 500 troops to the US-Mexico border to help federal border agents amid the corona virus pandemic, the United States has maintained an average of 5,000 troops on the southwest border to support Patrol Border with carrying out law enforcement duties.

To reduce the likelihood of border officers being exposed to the Covid-19 virus in addition to American concerns that the pandemic will suppress the Mexican economy and encourage illegal immigration from Mexico to cross into America. While the Mexican government declared a state of health emergency and issued stricter rules aimed at tackling the corona virus that spreads rapidly after the number of cases rose past 1,000 and the number of deaths rose sharply. This is different from the American and Canadian borders where Canada does not agree if the US sends troops to the country’s borders and is considered as an unnecessary step and will damage bilateral relations between the two countries where the borders of the two countries have been managed with soft management or different safeguards. with the American-Mexican border applying a hard management model or strict border guarding. The Trump administration has increased its response to the corona virus outbreak this month because infections have spread across the country. For the first time last Tuesday, the United States recorded nearly 700 new deaths in one day. The country now has a total of more than 3,800 deaths and more than 185,000 cases so it must close its North and South border since March 20 to limit the spread of the Covid-19 Virus.

Indonesia at the time of this writing the latest corona virus positive (Covid-19) case data in Indonesia continues to show an increase in the number of patients. the number of positive cases of Covid-19 in Indonesia already exists at 7135 people. With the addition of new patients as of April 3, as many as 5000 people, the number of positive cases of Covid-19 in Indonesia on April 21, 2020, reached 7135 patients. This figure is based on the latest update released by the Task Force for the Acceleration of Covid-19 Handling. Referring to the same data, the number of positive Covid-19 patients in Indonesia who are still undergoing treatment is 7135 people. While 842 Covid-19 patients were declared successful. The number of patients who recovered was increased by 708 compared to April 3 data. On the other hand, the death rate due to Covid-19 is also still increasing. Until April 3, 2020, there were 616 Covid-19 patients who died. To date, positive cases of Covid-19 have spread in 34 provinces (Idhom, 2020). Indonesia’s border with several countries bordering on the land such as Papua New Guinea, where the government of Papua New Guinea since January 30, 2020 has closed its border in Wutung which borders Skouw Papua Indonesia due to fears of the spread of the Covid-19 virus and then the Indonesian border in Skouw Papua also closed so that citizens of these two countries cannot cross this temporary border (Evarukdijati, 2020).

The position of the Indonesian government in managing borders amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus is to close its borders as did other countries in the border region. This is done so that the spread of the covid-19 virus can be minimized and not spread because the spread of this pandemic is through humans who contact each other through direct interaction. So that human mobility at the border of a country needs to be limited or even eliminated to close its distribution.

The global spread of the Covid-19 virus shows that the international community that has moved from one country to another through national borders as if those borders do not appear to restore the border position of the countries in the world with various treatments of borders his country to close the spread of this virus. The position of the country’s borders becomes very important to save the lives of the citizens of their citizens who directly have an identity as a certain citizen and remove the symbol of the identity of the world community. The community with the symbol of the nation’s identity again became stronger with the spread of this infectious disease. Each country sets health standards for prevention and prevention of this disease according to standards set by the UN health agency – WHO.

Infectious diseases have in fact strengthened the basic bases of the country both the borders of the country, maximum protection of citizens by each country and indirectly strengthen the identity of the country’s people. The intended community identity is self-reflection or self-reflection originating from the family, gender, culture, ethnicity and socialization process. Identity basically refers to the reflection of oneself and other people’s perceptions of individuals, including the strengthening of religious values. With identity able to distinguish one citizen from another citizen and on the other hand identity as a unifying tool of a country’s society in dealing with the spread of this epidemic.

Infectious diseases that spread globally are able to withstand the flow of globalization in an extraordinary way and have a negative impact on the economies of all countries in the world so that many people lose their jobs for some jobs that cannot be done from home such as factory workers and others due to social restrictions imposed by every country and the other result is hunger lurking behind this plague. The readiness of each state government to be responsible for the lives of every citizen is a measure of the country’s success today.

Learning from historical experience from time to time related to the spread of various globalized viruses, each country needs to continue to improve the standard of management of the country’s borders so as to provide a sense of security to its border communities. With the spread of the Covid-19 virus, it shows that globalization has a devastating effect on the spread of epidemics that are easily spread due to the high mobility of the world community, so that the country needs to reposition itself so that it can inhibit the spread of epidemics as it is today. By strengthening national borders, it will strengthen the identity of the people of each country.

By Melyana R Pugu