All very commendable for elementary school students to support their religious wallahs in protesting against a movie. Unspun, however is curious whether the DVDs they burned were legal copies or the cheap pirated stuff you get at Ratu Plaza and other illegal vendors.
If it is the latter then you have to wonder what MUI has to say about respecting intellectual property rights. LOL
(Pic and story from The Jakarta Globe)
Indonesian Elementary School Students Set Fire To ‘2012’ Film DVDs
The controversy over the film “2012” continued on Wednesday when hundreds of elementary school students in Bogor, West Java, set fire to DVD copies of the disaster film.
Students at Kemang Elementary School in Bogor burned “2012” DVDs and posters in their school playground.
One of the students, named Rifki, said the end of days could not be determined by man because it was God’s secret.
“Nobody knows about the end of days, not even prophets or angels,” Rifki told okezone.com.
After they finished torching the DVDs, the students held a prayer session.
Protests against the movie were also voiced by the Riau branch of the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI). Mahdini, the head of Riau’s MUI, said that the movie had violated God’s power.
“Nobody in the world could imagine the catastrophe of the end of the world. “2012” is misleading,” Mahdini said.
Meanwhile, MUI chairman Amidhan suggested that the Indonesian Film Censor Board (LSF) withdraw the movie from cinemas, saying that the board did not do a good job of editing the film, which could lead to more controversy.
Amidhan said there was a part of the movie that showed a collapsed mosque, but there was no footage of a collapsed church.
“The board should have cut the footage (of the collapsed mosque). If the movie only showed a church, no problem, but they also showed a mosque. We have a difference in culture,” Amidhan told okezone.com.
The MUI branch in Malang, East Java, issued a fatwa on the film on Monday, calling it “improper and misleading” and the Surakata branch in Central Java also expressed its opposition on Tuesday.
The film, directed by Roland Emmerich, portrays the earth’s destruction following the movement of the magnetic poles and shows various disasters sweeping the globe such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.
JG
Unspun 
Children in elementary school should not be busy burning DVD’s and concerning themselves with religious edicts. What are their parents and teachers teaching them? The last time kids got riled up about burning stuff it ended in WWII and the Nazi regime. Whoever it is that is using children as political tools had better stop it!
With regard to 2012:
It’s a movie! No one is predicting anything! It’s a human right to use imagination!
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@Rima: Always a pleasure to have a visit from you. Amazing how serious people can get over a movie. Obviously nothing better to do with their lives.
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Perhaps they should do some research before doing all this. 2012 is not the first movie with a doomsday theme and certainly will not be the last. Perhaps they missed recent movie, “Knowing”.
To be able to attract this many attention (pros & cons) just further prove the popularity of Roland Emmerich’s movies. The MUI’s act just add more promotion for this movie and makes more people curious and go to see 2012 instead. They actually help boosting the ticket (and DVD) sale 🙂
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It was also one of the problems with 2012 in the US:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/14/2012-roland-emmerich-viral-marketing
From link above:
“Disaster movie 2012 inspired panic in the States with Nasa having to reassure Americans that the world wasn’t about to end. Is movie viral marketing getting too clever for its own good?”
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It seemed that stupidity knows no boundaries. And they lured children into their shallow thinking. God help us…
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