JAKARTA - Several popular American wrestling programmes have been pulled from Indonesian television, a spokeswoman said on Thursday, following the death of a nine-year-old boy whose friends practised fighting moves on him. SmackDown and other shows produced by the Stamford, Connecticut-based World Wrestling Entertainment Inc were last screened on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for Indonesia's Lativi broadcaster, the only company to have aired the programmes.
Linda Rifai said the screenings were stopped "to avoid stoking controversy" and not because the company was admitting a "correlation" between the death and its shows.
The decision was made following weeks of pressure from parents and educators who blamed the programmes for violent child behaviour and the boy's death on November 16 in Bandung, West Java.
He was hurt several weeks earlier when three friends practised wrestling moves on him, but the exact cause of his death is still unclear. Rifai declined to say if the cancellation of the programmes, which had been aired six nights a week for four straight hours, was permanent or temporary. At least nine other boys, mostly elementary school students, reportedly sustained injuries after wrestling games.
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JAKARTA - Several popular American wrestling programmes have been pulled from Indonesian television, a spokeswoman said on Thursday, following the death of a nine-year-old boy whose friends practised fighting moves on him. SmackDown and other shows produced by the Stamford, Connecticut-based World Wrestling Entertainment Inc were last screened on Tuesday, said a spokeswoman for Indonesia's Lativi broadcaster, the only company to have aired the programmes.
