punk rockers shaved, beaten, sent to re-education camps

[jack404]

POLICE in Indonesia's most conservative province raided a punk-rock concert and detained 65 fans, buzzing off their spiky mohawks and stripping away body piercings because of the perceived threat to Islamic values.
Dog-collar necklaces and chains also were taken from the youths before they were thrown in pools of water for ''spiritual'' cleansing, local police chief Iskandar Hasan said.
After replacing their ''disgusting'' clothes, he handed each a toothbrush and barked ''use it''.



The crackdown marked the latest effort by authorities to promote strict moral values in Aceh, the only province in this secular but predominantly Muslim nation of 240 million to have imposed Islamic laws.
Here, adultery is punishable by stoning to death. Homosexuals have been thrown in jail or lashed in public with rattan canes. Women are forced to wear headscarves and told, please, no tight pants.
It's not clear why police decided to hone in on punks.



Though pierced and tattooed teens have complained for months about harassment, the roundup at a weekend concert attended by more than 100 people was by far the biggest and most dramatic bust yet.
Baton-wielding police scattered fans, many of whom had travelled from other parts of the sprawling archipelagic nation to attend the show.
Mr Hasan said 59 young men and five women were loaded into vans and brought to a police detention centre 60 kilometres from the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.
They would spend 10 days getting rehabilitation, training in military-style discipline and religious classes, including Koran recitation, he said. Afterward, they'll be sent home.
Twenty-year-old punk Fauzan was mortified. ''Why? Why my hair?'' he said, pointing to his cleanly shaven head. ''We didn't hurt anyone. This is how we've chosen to express ourselves. Why are they treating us like criminals?''
The women, some in tears, were given short, blunt bobs.
Mr Hasan insisted he had done nothing wrong. ''We're not torturing anyone,'' the police chief said. ''We're not violating human rights. We're just trying to put them back on the right moral path.''
However, Nur Kholis, a national human rights commissioner, deplored the detentions, saying police have to explain what kinds of criminal laws have been broken.
''Otherwise, they violated people's right of gathering and expression,'' Mr Kholis said, promising to investigate.
Aceh - where Islam first arrived in Indonesia from Saudi Arabia centuries ago - enjoys semi-autonomy from the central government.
That was part of a peace deal negotiated after the 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 people in the province convinced both separatist rebels and the army to lay down their arms. Neither side wanted to add to people's suffering.
Some local governments in other parts of the country have also tried to ban ''immoral'' behaviour, such as drinking alcohol, gambling and kissing in public. They have met with limited success, however, largely because most of the country's 200 million Muslims practise moderate forms of the faith.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/polic...#ixzz1gh08k12x

[BGH]

Get used to it, that's what they're about to start doing here.

[HunterAlpha1]

sometimes the muslims hit the nail on the head! if only we'd do this kind of thing here, but without the koran, maybe society would improve.

[raven818]

Jack404
Some local governments in other parts of the country have also tried to ban ''immoral'' behaviour, such as drinking alcohol, gambling and kissing in public. They have met with limited success, however, largely because most of the country's 200 million Muslims practise moderate forms of the faith.

The same issue regarding muslims involved in criminal activity in this country can be demonstrated here. The article speaks of a population of 200 million muslims practicing moderation.

The ones who see the actions there as wrong, certainly have enough clout to stop it if they really wanted to. Instead, actions against the populace are ignored, and the power looks the other way.

In this country, the BG muslims are in an ongoing campaign to destroy our way of life. And the so-called moderates here, choose to look away.

What proof is there? They should have representatives from every major city, through out this country, constantly appearing on TV and writing articles in the paper, on a daily basis, condemning extremism. If those kinds of public reactions from muslims were to become the norm, we may begin to believe they actually are against the violence.

Instead, once in a great while, someone representing a muslim community shows up on TV condemning extremist violence, and nobody watching them talk, believes one iota of what they are saying.

And we never, will until they take the effort to prove to us that killing infidels is not the way of the koran.

I'd like to see a group of those moderates report, or take down, a group of extremists. Won't happen, but I'd like to see it.