VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesia is ready to participate in the 2022 ASEAN Deaf Games multi-sport event that will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on November 20-27, 2022.

"God willing, in November 2022, we will participate in the 1st ASEAN Deaf Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia," Chairperson of the Indonesian Sports Association for the Deaf (Porturin) Harpalis Alwi told ANTARA here on Wednesday.

The games were supposed to be held in 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand. However, in November 2018, the ASEAN Deaf Sports Federation (ADSF) decided to cancel the tournament since the host was unable to fulfil the obligations and minimum requirements regarding the administration and management of the event.

The 1st ASEAN Deaf Games is planned to contest four sports: athletics, bowling, badminton, and futsal.

The chairperson of Porturin said that his side had prepared both its male and female athletes to take part in all competed sports, except bowling.

Porturin is the parent organization of the sports for deaf athletes in Indonesia.

The association is a member of the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD) under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Thus, Porturin athletes are different from athletes, who are members of the National Paralympic Committee (NPC) of Indonesia, since the NPC follows the International Paralympic Committee’s (IPC’s) athlete classification rules that divides athletes into physical (muscles and limbs), vision, and intellectual impaired athletes.

Recently, Porturin had facilitated Indonesian deaf badminton athletes to compete in the Asia Pacific Deaf Badminton Championships that took place in Pattaya, Chonburi, Thailand, on September 14-21, 2022.

Indonesia bagged two gold medals in the tournament.

Ilyas Rachman Ryandhani secured the first gold medal for the contingent in the men's singles event after defeating his compatriot, Edi Susanto.

Meanwhile, the second gold medal of the contingent was won by Ryandhani and Susanto in the men's doubles event. (Antaranews)