Laws and Sausages...

Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.

-- Otto von Bismarck

Luna Maya, Twitter, Paparazzi, and Prostitutes

One of the good things about not having a twitter account is that there is no temptation to vent one's frustrations and anger out into the public sphere. Perhaps on a little reflection Luna Maya might have thought twice about ranting that "infotainment are lower than prostitutes, murders!!! May your soul burn in hell!!!" I guess it is fair to say that she was not mincing any words there. But does she have a point?

To work this out one needs to consider the situation that preceded this little rant. Luna Is dating a singer of one of Indonesia's bigger bands, Ariel of Peter Pan fame. Ariel was married and has a beautiful young daughter (no where near as good looking as Will of course). There has been some suggestion that Luna is a home wrecker and it is her fault that Ariel split with his former wife. However, that was not the issue that sparked the most recent venting.

Luna's twitter account, lunmay, was shut down recently after the vent went public. Luna has apologized to her 123,952 followers for shutting down the account. I probably would not have had one in the first place if I was a star of the small and silver screens. Simply, tweeting that you are watching a movie is like a red rag to a bull and is certain to bring the paparazzi stalkers out in force.

As the story goes, Luna, Ariel, and Alleia (Ariel's daughter) went to watch the premiere of Ariel's first movie, The Dreamer (Sang Pemimpi) at EX Plaza. Now, my recollections of EX are that it was an excellent place for a little bit of celebrity spotting if that was your thing. In any event, little Alleia had fallen asleep during the movie and was being carried out by Luna.

This is where it gets really interesting. In the scramble for good photos and an interview one of the infotainment throng cracked little Alleia on the head with a camera. For a parent, even the girlfriend of a parent, this can certainly arouse some pretty heated emotions. If someone clocked Will in the head with a camera, then I would be tempted to grab the camera a clock the fella right back.

The lesson here is two-fold, Luna Maya had apparently agreed to an interview in the lobby once little Alleia was in the safety of the car. So, the gathered throng of infotainment journalists would have got their interview and obligatory shots if the had been a little more patient. the second lesson is do not vent your frustrations on Twitter no matter how justified you feel about it.

The spat, if the Twitter message can be called such, has escalated with the Indonesian Journalists Association threatening to take legal action against Luna for allegedly comparing them to prostitutes. The comparison to murderers was a little harsh, but the comparison to prostitutes probably is not so harsh.

In fact, it is probably a slur against all the prostitutes out there. Let's face it, infotainment journalists and photographers sell their assets to those willing to pay for it, similar to prostitutes. But, on a more serious note, the Indonesian Association of Journalists might also want to consider that one of their members was responsible for the assault of a child. My question would be, "does the Indonesian Association of Journalists really want to pursue this one?"

Most people might have an insatiable appetite for celebrity gossip and news, but most of these people would also balk at the idea that journalists need to assault and harm children in order to get their pound of flesh.

Maybe it is time that the government considered putting into place specific laws that protect celebrities from over-zealous infotainment journalists. And, perhaps it is also time that those that drive the market, infotainment publishers started to self-regulate what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to getting that all important shot or all important interview.

Public figures are what they are, but this does not mean that they forfeit all their rights to privacy because they have appeared in a film or worked as a presenter on TV.

It is time the infotainment industry got their collective act together and showed some class.

Yemen - 12-Year-Old Dies During Childbirth...

This is one of those moments where you are thinking about what you were doing at 12 years of age. It certainly was not thinking about getting someone pregnant and for my female readers I bet it was not about giving birth to your first child sometime through that last year before reaching teenager-hood.

I consider myself culturally aware and sensitive and all those other politically correct ideas, but for the life of me I cannot fathom the interest that some men have in wanting to marry pre-pubescent girls and then wanting to consummate that marriage after the girls first period. I am sure that there are arguments to be made for and against whether the Koran permits such unions.

My take as a non-Muslim who has read a little was that perhaps these unions might have been part of the cultural landscape and perhaps even permissible back in the prophet's day but even then the prophet was given special leeway from Allah in this respect. And, it was very much a case of the prophet saying do as I say and not as I do on this particular front. I am guessing that if I have misunderstood on these details someone is sure to want to set me on the straight path.

Anyways, this post is about a 12-year-old Yemeni girl who was forced into marriage as an 11-year-old and subsequently fell pregnant. She has died during childbirth and the child she was carrying has also died. Apparently, Fawziya Abdullah Youssef, endured a complicated labour and delivery that lasted some three days, according to the Yemeni Organization for Childhood Protection (Seyaj).

The problem is that the law that has been passed setting a statutory minimum age for girls to marry has not been enacted by the President, Ali Abdullah Saleh. So, even if law enforcement was inclined to stop the practice of grown men taking young girls as brides they could not legally do it.

Another issue is that even if the law is signed off on by the President then the reality is that many Yemeni families are impoverished and illiterate. When this is combined with ignorance of the harm that young girls will suffer as a consequence of being married off before reaching there teens means that tragedies such as Fawziya are all the more likely to occur.

Seyaj estimates that the marriage rate for girls under the age of 15 is approximately 50% in the rural parts of Yemen.

The marriage of children is not an uncommon thing in Yemen. I have written about this in the past here.