Jakarta- from www.thejakartaglobe.com – Featuring a foreign porn star in a local horror movie was tantamount to “poking fun” at the country’s antipornography campaign, Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring said on Monday.

Tifatul was referring to American porn star Tera Patrick’s role in a movie titled “Rintihan Kuntilanak Perawan” (“The Moans of a Virgin Ghost”), which also starred local actresses Catherine Wilson and Angelique, and was released earlier this month.

He was speaking after launching a national campaign for healthy and safe use of the Internet initiated by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and 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.

He said that though there was apparent resistance to the antipornography drive in the media, particularly on the Internet, “I am sure that the silent majority of Indonesians actually support the drive.”

He said other than the three ministries which already pledged their support to the campaign, the communications ministry also has the backing of religious communities, whose representatives showed up at the launch because “they are also worried.”

He said that all religions decry adultery and pornography but the easily accessible online material and those responsible for it seemed to “demean” parental and religious ethics “as if they were nothing”

He called on film producers to take part in the campaign, and to avoid looking for sensationalism by hiring foreign porn stars such as Patrick.

“She personifies the resistance to morality,” he said.

Habib Salim Alatas, head of the Jakarta chapter of the Islamic Defenders Front, also known as FPI, has said he was unaware that Patrick was in Indonesia to shoot the movie.

“The movie producers have been so underhand. It makes us stressed,” Habib said.

“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,” he said.