Thursday, 3 September 2015

Indonesian politician bans dating after dark

The new rules are intended to combat the moral decay of modern society, including the growth in unplanned teen pregnancies, and return the area to its rural roots Photo: Alamy

The path of young love has never been an easy one. But dating just became much more challenging for Indonesian teenagers in West Java.

Young couples have been banned from seeing each other after 9pm at night and could be forced to marry if they flout the new regulations.

Dedi Mulyadi, the chief of Purwakarta district, intends to introduce the night-time dating curfew on teenagers aged under 17 in a morality crackdown.


If they are caught breaking the ban three times, village councils can force their parents to require them to marry, he said.


The new rules are intended to combat the moral decay of modern society, including the growth in unplanned teen pregnancies, and return the area to its rural roots, Mr Mulyadi explained.


He said the new provision would ensure teenagers were home in bed early and reclaimed a more traditional way of life in the region 60 miles from Jakarta, the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim country.

"I come from a village and back in the day, you could not visit a neighbour after 9pm because villagers would be in bed, preparing to wake up at dawn to till their paddy fields," he told AFP news agency.

Unmarried couples will apparently still be free to romance to their hearts’ desires during daylight hours. But after the sun sets, he intends to deploy village patrols backed by new cameras to track down young lovers. Even encounters in each other’s homes will be banned.

There are a number of apparent hurdles to the proposals – not least it is not clear how the marriages can be enforced as children under 16 are not allowed to wed.

But Mr Mulyadi is undeterred by such technicalities. Indeed he has told his region's subdistrict council heads that if do not finalise the new law this month, he will cut off their funding.

He seems have widespread support in the predominantly Muslim region. About 200 village chiefs have agreed to the new law, local media reported.



Source: The Telegraph

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