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Padang. Minister of Communication and Information Technology Tifatul Sembiring said on Friday that his office had set the goal of completing the government’s draft regulation against pornography within the next six months, after which all pornographic Web sites would be blocked.

The minister made the statement in Padang on Friday after leading the Eid prayer and delivering a sermon to mark Idul Adha in front of a congregation of more than a thousand Muslims in a field in front of the West Sumatra governor’s office.

The former leader of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) made the statement in response to queries about the monitoring of the distribution of locally produced pornographic movies.

Tifatul said another bill was being prepared in connection with the law on pornography, which was passed last year.

PKS was the main author of the controversial antipornography law, which has been criticized by some of its opponents for being a thinly veiled attempt at imposing aspects of Shariah law on the country.

Tifatul said that once the regulation had been approved, all the pornographic sites would be blocked, adding that software would block access for village and subdistrict Internet networks.

Software will also be used to block access to Web sites containing content judged blasphemous or offensive against ethnic groups, races and religions.

In his sermon, Tifatul claimed 500 pornographic movies had been produced in Indonesia. But the saddest thing, he said, was that 70 percent of the people portrayed in the films were students in middle and high school.

While invoking God’s protection, he said that it was evidence of society’s moral decadence that people were now making movies of adultery.

JG, Antara