Indonesia Update

Restu, Iyo, and Li are three middle school students who loves watching the populer WWF Smackdown TV shows. In this show, wrestlers glorifies violence in various cool fighting moves. Although the shows are violent, the wrestlers always ended up safe and sound with no injury.

It’s because it’s all just tricks indeed. But when you’re watching the show that you don’t understand the language, and there’s no clear disclaimer/clarification — and you’re just 3 middle-school kids; then it’s real easy to be fooled into thinking that it’s all real. And thinking that you can do it too, and also walk away with no injury. Just like their “heroes” in the WWF Smackdown.

Restu, Iyo, and Li then practiced the moves into their neighbour Reza, a 9 years old boy.
The boy’s small body was slammed. They crushed the boy’s head into the floor. Reza’s hand was locked and twisted. And various other tortures applied into the little boy.
Reza can not do anything against the three bigger bullies.

Reza then told about the pain to his father, Herman (53), but Reza didn’t tell why or who did it to him. After a week, the pain got much worse, and Reza had to be cared for in a hospital. X-ray photo shows that his left arm’s has been ripped from the socket. He suffered from head injury. And a few other injuries.

On 16 Nov 2006, Reza died, painfully, in Herman’s arms.

Herman asked local parliament and the city’s authority to try stop Lativi, the TV station who aired the show in Indonesia, from continuing the show. He hesitated to sue the TV station, because his concern is to avoid further victims, not to get monetary compensation.

Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (West Java branch) said that they have sent stern warning to Lativi in regard to this. Vice President of KPI (Komisi Penyiaran Indonesia; Indonesian Broadcasting Commission), Sinansari Ecip, said they’ve called Lativi to come next week and will start the investigation.

Lativi’s PR Manager, Raldy Doy, confirmed that he already heard about the boy’s death. He said that Lativi will also perform their own investigation into the matter.
In their written statement received by Republika sent by Raldy via email, he said that SmackDown is purely an entertainment show. I guess that’s even more reason to stop airing it.

Source: Republika newspaper, 22 Nov 2006, first page.

This entry was posted Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.