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Amid the circus surrounding the guilty verdict handed down last week to rock star Nazril Irham, also known as Ariel, a couple of important things went without much notice.

The first was that the three-and-a-half-year prison sentence was the No. 1 global story on the Web site of the Wall Street Journal, meaning that millions of people who read the story there and elsewhere online were given the perception that Indonesia is a backward country with a dubious judicial system that buckles to threats by Islamist extremists.

The second thing is that some supposed child protection activists here have neither the slightest clue what they are talking about, nor any basic understanding of human sexuality.

The Ariel verdict was yet another international embarrassment for Indonesia, whose leaders simply don’t understand that they make themselves look even more foolish by drumming up scandals such as this rather than letting them fade away.

This ongoing “morality campaign” seems to know no limits — nor to be guided by common sense.

And with Sunday’s horrific attack on Ahmadiyah followers in Banten — videos of which are now circulating on YouTube — the country seems poised for more bad press.

Officially committed to tolerance as a society, Indonesia is looking more intolerant by the day.

What began with the passage of the Anti-Pornography Law in 2008 — a shameless charade by politicians to make themselves more appealing to voters before an election year — is now running wild, with young men and women being thrown in prison alongside murderers and drug dealers for being “immoral,” while mob violence is being used to enforce religious orthodoxy.

But who are the immoral ones here? Take the past 12 months, for example.

Some of the public figures, state institutions and groups who are behind the morality campaign — government officials, political party leaders, current and former lawmakers, police, state prosecutors, judges, hard-line Islamic groups — were themselves accused of the following: corruption, embezzlement, fabricating evidence, influence peddling, censorship, religious persecution and discrimination, lying under oath, lying to the public, assault with a deadly weapon, adultery, rape, torture and terrorism.

The Indonesian people, now more than ever, must ask themselves whether these are the kind of people who should be telling them how to live their lives.

And there’s more. Take a look at the more notable “morality” convictions of the past year. There was Ariel, and before him, Erwin Arnada, editor of Playboy Indonesia magazine, and before him, four “sexy” dancers in Bandung.

Do you see a pattern forming?

Musicians, journalists and young women are being incarcerated, but not lawmakers who make sex tapes with a dangdut singer or take photos of themselves in their underwear with their secretary. Who will be next under the morality campaign — artists, poets and anticorruption activists?

I understand now why Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika is refusing to enforce the Anti-Pornography Law.

Sadly, this has a trickle-down effect. Take, for example, Asrorun Niam Soleh, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), who was the chief player in the other important thing that went with little notice amid the furor over Ariel’s prison sentence.

Soleh said he believed the sentence was too lenient and that the sex videos would encourage people to rape children. Excuse me, Pak Soleh, but where did you come up with that nonsense?

Was this the result of some ground-breaking investigation by the KPAI, or did you simply say whatever popped into your mind whether it was true or not?

Are you perhaps affiliated with Dewi Fithria of Aceh Ranub, a nongovernmental organization that works for women’s and children’s empowerment in West Aceh?

In May 2010, she supported a ban on women wearing jeans there because “many cases of sexual abuse and rape can be blamed on women wearing sexy outfits.”

A simple search on Google reveals numerous studies around the world that conclude sexual provocation is not a motivation in rape cases. One US study put it at less than 4.4 percent of all cases.

Another one said that most convicted rapists couldn’t even remember what their victims were wearing.

But here we have a member of Indonesia’s pre-eminent child protection commission, as well as a women’s empowerment advocate, making utterly false statements about a link between sex and rape.

Is it any wonder that people are being tossed into prison for loosely defined breaches of morality?

How will young Indonesians coming of age ever grasp the truth about sexuality when the country’s leaders are continually making incorrect statements about it?

When will the madness end? Well, not anytime soon. Let’s take a look at the latest antics by the people who brought us the Anti-Pornography Law. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives are refusing to meet with anticorruption officials after 19 of their current and former colleagues were arrested on graft charges.

The House says its members cannot be tainted by contact with Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputies Bibit Samad

Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah because the pair are “suspects” in what has been proven to be a trumped-up extortion case for which the charges have already been dismissed.

Don’t you people have anything better to do? The country is slowly but surely being taken over by violent, radical Islamic groups pushing their extremist agenda, as proven by the deaths of three Ahmadiyah followers in Banten on Sunday.

And we are having a debate about who can be allowed inside the House building?

Interestingly, none of the aforementioned immorality “convicts” were accused of adultery, unlike two ministers in the president’s own cabinet. If those allegations are true, don’t they count as immoral also?

For his part, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono did not comment on the Ariel court verdict, though he did wade into the sex tapes scandal last year by ordering the National Police to investigate the case.

Yudhoyono must be thanking his lucky stars that the Ariel verdict wasn’t delivered until after he spoke before the World Economic Forum in Davos two weekends ago.

Otherwise, he might have faced some uncomfortable questions from the world’s press about why three soldiers from the Indonesian Armed Forces were sentenced to 10 months or less in prison on Jan. 24 for torturing civilians in Papua, while Ariel received more than four times that punishment for making private sex tapes that he never intended to release publicly.

I happened to see that military torture video on YouTube and, for the record, I can unequivocally say it didn’t give me the urge to rape any children. It did, however, make me sick to my stomach.

 
Joe Cochrane is a contributing editor of the Jakarta Globe. His writings also appear at www.datelinejakarta.com.