Forum: Condom Week

In regards to your article titled "Condom Week sets sights on youths" I ask that you please ask the National AIDS Commission secretary Nafsiah Mboi to confirm her statistics. She is quoted as saying that "over fifty percent of our youths below the age of 30 are already infected with sexually transmitted diseases". This seems ridiculously high!

Also your article says that "Nafsiah called on all those under the age of 40 to abstain from free sex and drugs, to be loyal to one partner, and if they still chose to have sex, to take precautions by using a condom."

Does this mean that those of us over 40 are encouraged and free to use drugs and engage in condomless free sex behind our partners backs?
BIMA
Jakarta

Bombers' bodies -- Nov. 09, Online

Under most circumstances I wouldn't be comfortable with the use of the death penalty. I'm pleased the death penalty was abolished in my home country, for example, and I wish it could be abolished here. But that is not possible.

If life imprisonment meant keeping the bombers in isolation in maximum security facilities then I'd rather they got life. The reality in Indonesia is that the bombers have had ready access to the mass media throughout their sentence and have been in regular contact with all their old associates.

Executing them was the only way to prevent further loss of life due to their continued activities as terrorists. True, they couldn't actually plant any bombs themselves while in custody, but due to the state of the Indonesian prisons they were able to do virtually anything they wished -- short of that.

They were free to spread their version of "jihad" and to encourage and support other terrorists. Lessons must be learned by the prison authorities.
DAVID
Jakarta

Families of some victims have been quite vocal in opposing this so I think that's a nonargument. I agree that this has simply made them martyrs and sadly, will not provide a happy future. The craziest have a cause celebre now and it can only get worse. I pray I'm wrong.
ALAN
Jakarta