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Ahok slammed for allowing tobacco exhibition in Jakarta

Jakarta Globe - April 7, 2016

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Jakarta – Anti-tobacco activists slammed Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama for allowing a planned international exhibition on tobacco machinery to be held in the capital this month, as well as accusing those opposing the expo as "agents of foreign interests."

Several students from University of Indonesia (UI)'s School of Public Health came to City Hall on Thursday demanding the city government reject the World Tobacco Process and Machinery Expo, which is slated to be held in Jakarta on April 27-28. The students brought results from an online petition on Change.org signed by more than 12,000 people.

But Basuki rejected the students' demand, telling reporters that "more people got cancer from food laced with formaldehyde than smoking."

"Is it wrong to set up a cigarette factory? Of course not. [Cigarettes] are a controlled substance. Places to smoke are also limited," the governor said, stressing that smoking and producing cigarettes themselves are not illegal. "Even without the exhibition cigarette factories still buy machinery and people still buy cigarettes."

Basuki became defensive when Al-Jazeera journalist Step Vaessen, a Dutch national, asked why he allowed the exhibition to be staged in the Indonesian capital when other countries had refused.

"You foreigners shouldn't threaten our sovereignty with your silly thoughts. You [foreigners] are trying to introduce synthetic cigarettes [to replace Indonesia's clove cigarettes]. Foreigners should not tell Indonesia what to do," he told Vaessen.

On her Twitter account, Vaessen said Basuki is well aware that she is a journalist and not an anti-tobacco activist. "Why was I yelled at because of my question?" she wrote in one post in Bahasa Indonesia.

"I was only asking about the tobacco expo," she replied to a follower. "I'm not upset, I am just confused why I was yelled at for no reason," she replied to another follower.

Bernadette Fellarika, coordinator of the group Smoke Free Jakarta, said by allowing the exhibition to continue the governor risks undoing all of the progress the city has made to control tobacco.

"Jakarta is the first city in Indonesia to introduce a strict bylaw against smoking in public spaces. Recently it has introduced a bylaw forbidding all tobacco billboards and advertisements on Jakarta's streets," she told the Jakarta Globe.

Fellarika also noted that Basuki has rejected a similar exhibition 2014, adding that he should remain consistent in his anti-tobacco drive.

Basuki said an exhibition on tobacco machinery "will not have a direct impact to the number of smokers," a remark that Fellarika dismissed.

"If anything [the exhibition] will help companies become less reliant on workers who hand roll cigarettes. [The exhibition] will help companies produce cigarettes faster and in much larger quantity because [machines] can operate non-stop, 24 hours a day," she said.

Source: http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/ahok-slammed-allowing-tobacco-exhibition-jakarta/.