JAKARTA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - SmackDown, a popular U.S. professional wrestling television show, should be taken off air in Indonesia, a cabinet minister says after speculation a boy may have been killed by children mimicking the fight moves.
Authorities have yet to decide whether the blows received by the 9-year-old boy in October caused his death a month later.
However, widespread media coverage and public discussion has focused on that possibility.
SmackDown features wrestlers punching, kicking, choking and slamming one another to the floor in an elaborate, mostly scripted entertainment format.
Private broadcaster Lativi airs the show in Indonesia and illegal video copies are sold across the world's fourth most populous country. Schoolboys are a leading fanbase.
"It is just proper for these kind of shows to be wisely stopped. It seems as if there are no better shows," Women Empowerment Minister Meutia Hatta said on Elshinta news radio on Wednesday.
State news agency Antara quoted her as adding:"This is not only a problem for parents to deal with. This is about society failing to filter what shows are good for our children."
Some parents and leading educators had already called for a ban. However, Lativi has declined to stop running the show, instead pushing the airtime from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. when presumably fewer children are awake to watch.
Indonesia's broadcasting commission has not decided yet whether to stop the show from airing. Since reforms swept the country after the 1998 demise of President Suharto's authoritarian regime, government censorship has been cut back and controversial television programmes have mushroomed.
Since the boy died in the West Java city of Bandung on Nov. 16, Indonesian media have hunted for other stories of injuries to students in fighting games that might be linked to the show.
"Victims have clearly fallen but ironically we could not do much. The SmackDown case has clearly shown how weak is the protection for the public from broadcasting content that has destructive potential," Koran Tempo daily newspaper said in a Wednesday editorial.
Some in the United States also say wrestling shows can spark violence or cause injuries when fans try to imitate the stunts they feature, and the argument has been raised in court cases.
The broadcasts often include warnings viewers should not try doing at home what they see the professionals -- who themselves are sometimes injured -- doing on television.
