JAKARTA—Not content to launch a national campaign to dissuade people from accessing porn sites online by blocking as many adult sites from the country as possible, Indonesian Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring said Monday that just the fact that former porn star Tera Patrick traveled to the island nation to shoot a local horror movie sent a terrible message that ridiculed the country’s anti-porn campaign.
His words came on the heels of the launch of a national campaign advocating the safe and healthy use of the internet. The new campaign was launched by his ministry with the backing of the National Education Ministry, the Religious Affairs Ministry and the State Ministry of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection.
"I call on the public at large to support this national campaign instead of mocking it. We try to block [pornography] but yet we have a porn star being brought in," he said.
Patrick had been in the country shooting a role in a movie titled, in English, The Moans of a Virgin Ghost, which also starred local actresses Catherine Wilson and Angelique. The movie was released earlier this month.
Sembiring also called on other film producers to avoid looking to hire foreign adult performers such as Patrick, who, he said, “Personifies the resistance to morality.”
Religious leaders in the country could not agree more. One who commented on the situation said Patrick should never have been allowed in the country in the first place, a mistake that will not be allowed to happen again.
"The next time a porn film star lands at Soekarno Hatta airport, we will block them. Nobody told us that the actress had already come and shot the movie in Indonesia," said Habib Salim Alatas, head of the Jakarta chapter of the Islamic Defenders Front.
