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Was religion relevant?

By Robert Basler
August 23, 2010
cross-culture | feedback | religion

Jakarta introduces women-only trains to avoid groping

INDONESIA/JAKARTA (Reuters Life!) – Women-only train carriages were launched this week in Jakarta in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in an attempt to avert groping and sexual harassment on packed commuter trains.

Your editors are showing their anti-Islamic bias again.

The first paragraph gratuitously labels Indonesia “the world’s most populous Muslim nation.” This is irrelevant to the story, unless you wanted to deliberately link “Muslims” with “groping”. Why else would you include those words?

When those same trains first came out in Japan, I bet you didn’t label Japan “the mainly Shinto Buddhist nation”. Nor, later on, India “the mainly Hindu nation”. Last time you ignored my letter on this issue. Perhaps I should refer my comments to the Press Council?

David B.

If we felt Indonesia’s religion was somehow relevant to this story, we should have made the reason clear to our readers. In this case, we did not: GBU Editor

Women board a women-only carriage of a commuter train in Jakarta August 19, 2010. REUTERS/Crack Palinggi

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