We’ve all heard adults ask children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It seems that sometimes the same grown-ups are fishing for ideas because they don’t have a clue about what being grown-up means.
Take Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) for example. Perhaps he should have consulted children before deciding on the topic for his National Children’s Day speech last Friday (July 23). He obviously didn’t and was clueless. On a special day dedicated to children, I doubt very much that the kids would have chosen to focus on sex videos.
“I want to highlight a tragedy,” SBY proclaimed to 300 children, “the moral tragedy that occurred recently in the form of pornographic videos.”
What was he thinking? Isn’t it a pornographic act in itself, exposing these children to the existence of sex videos and explaining what they are? The real tragedy was that by doing so, he robbed the children from 33 provinces of a five-minute slot they were supposed to have to read an eight-point declaration they had prepared especially for this event.
The event became a travesty, which according to child activist Arist Merdeka Sirait, turned into “children’s sadness day” (The Jakarta Post, July 24 “Children’s Day incident draws strong criticism”).
Yudhoyono’s tirade was yet another case of moral panic. The tendency to freak-out over sexy material is fast becoming our new favorite national pastime. What is it with SBY’s government anyway? Why are they so enthusiastic about conservative Muslims and almost hysterical with sex-phobia?
The whacky ideas of “morality” they espouse are so divorced from human reality in Indonesia. Like Victor Frankenstein’s nameless monster, this fixation on naughty sex is starting to take on a life of its own, wreaking wanton destruction on everyone who comes into contact with it.
Take Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring’s ridiculous proposal to block all porn websites in Indonesia. He says he dreams of a porn-free Ramadan “so that pornography would not interfere with Islamic religious obligations”. Given that Indonesia is now the largest porn market on the planet after Russia, Sembiring might as well dream of a White Christmas in Saudia Arabia.
And there I was thinking that the whole idea of Ramadan was to train Muslims to control their urges, including libidinous ones. Silly me!
And what about Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi? When sexy movie star and singer Julia “Jupe” Perez announced she intended to run for deputy regent of Pacitan, Yudhoyono’s hometown, he said people who committed pornographic acts and adultery didn’t fulfill the criteria to be regional heads. If that’s true then perhaps the majority of government officials should be disqualified. The head of the Human Rights Commission, Ifdal Kasim, soon put him right, however, by pointing out that even adulterers have political rights (a fact well known to our politicians, it seems).
Maybe the President needs to take his mind off the evils of immorality by paying more attention to the real life tragedies that beset his people.
The continued increase of child abuse is one example. The National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas Anak) reported that in the first five months of this year 1,826 cases of child abuse were recorded, compared to 1,891 cases for the whole of last year.
And, of course, these figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Like domestic abuse, child abuse is grossly underreported, because 68 percent of offenders are family members.
Our infant mortality rate (IMR) of 29.97 (ranked 151 out of 224 nations analyzed in the CIA Factbook in 2009) is another tragedy. According to Erna Witoelar, a former UN ambassador to the Asia Pacific, Indonesia’s IMR is akin to a plane carrying 200 babies crashing every day. By 2015, 5.1 million babies are predicted to be born with 15 percent facing a high risk of neonatal hazards.
The plight of street children is also a tragedy. Thousands of children drop out of school to help parents who don’t earn enough to support them. Part of the reason for this is that our education budget consistently falls short of the 20 percent stipulated in the Constitution.
This results in woefully inadequate educational facilities and a lack of support for children from low-income families, thus entrenching the corrosive cycles of inherited poverty that so obstruct Indonesia’s development.
Child marriages are another profound tragedy for many Indonesians. Despite the fact that the minimum legal age for marriage in Indonesia is 16 for girls and 19 for boys, many girls still marry as young as 12.
The Convention on Children’s Rights states that under-18s are still considered children. This means the Indonesian state is, in effect, legalizing statutory rape. Remember the infamous case of 43-year-old Syech Puji who married Ulfa when she was not even 12?
But absentee legislators are probably the biggest tragedy of all. After all, MPs are elected to fix all of these things, but low or no attendance is the norm. Our MPs are AWOL most of the time, so it is hardly surprising that they haven’t produced any legislation since they were sworn into office in 2009. As elected representatives of the people, their behavior is tantamount to treason.
The children and people of Indonesia are rooting for their rights. The legislators and the government are, if not rooting, rooted indeed.
The writer (www.juliasuryakusuma.com) is the author of Julia’s Jihad
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