After replacing their "disgusting" clothes, he handed each a toothbrush and barked: "Use it." It was 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 people to have imposed Islamic laws. Here, adultery is punishable by stoning to death, gay people have been thrown in jail or lashed in public with rattan canes, and women must wear headscarves.
Punk rockers have complained for months about harassment, but Saturday's roundup at a concert attended by more than 100 people was by far the most dramatic. Baton-wielding police broke up the concert, scattering young music lovers, many of whom had travelled from other parts of the sprawling archipelagic nation. Dozens were loaded into vans and taken to a police detention centre in the hills, 30 miles (60km) from the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, for rehabilitation, training in military-style discipline and religious classes, including Qur'an recitation.
They will be held there for at least 10 days, after which they will be returned to their parents. But the police chief, Hasan, insisted he had done nothing wrong. "We're not torturing anyone," he 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 detention, saying police must explain what criminal laws were violated by the youngsters.
There's a photo gallery here.
3 comments:
The police chief doesn't understand what human rights mean.
You call them mohicans? We say mohawks.
Three years ago Wiltshire police cancelled an entire festival because they believed that the music of the band Babyshambles was likely to incite violence. At the time the police claimed it was because Babyshambles tended to speed up and slow down the tempo of their music and this was likely to incite the crowd to violence. Later they claimed that they didn't have a problem with the band, but said that the "profile of the fans" was such that the police believed they were likely to be violent.
There was no particular history of violence at Babyshambles gigs. There is however a history of violence among other groups, for example certain football teams have violent fans. My local team's fans have a deserved reputation for violence, but the police have never canceled one of their games.
I would say that shaving a few heads is not as bad as canceling an entire festival with no real justification.
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