Letters: `Jaipong' ban?

The traditions and cultural heritage of Indonesia have evolved over centuries to express the thoughts and feelings of a society over a vast area and a multitude of peoples.

Indonesia's many and varied traditions have a depth and rich complexity that are amongst the world's finest. They portray a sophistication of an evolved and elaborate society.

They originated to pass information and stories from generation to generation in a time without written instruction. They were a mode for entertainment and a venue for humor.

These dances and songs are what Indonesia is as a country, as a civilization and as a people. Jaipong is an especially good example of a delightful expression of a vivacious and friendly people.

But paranoid and egocentric totalitarian theocracies have, throughout their domineering histories, always attempted to wipe out beauty and wonderfully aesthetic cultural traditions calling them pagan or sinful.

The people of Indonesia deserve far better than a religion that arrived from a much more primitive and barbaric foreign land and that demands absolute obedience to its numerous ultraconservative rules and regulations.

Stand up for your freedom and liberty. Fight these barbarians from a time too far past, and defend Indonesia.

Briend
JakartaHead