Why dressing up like clowns?

This comment is prompted by a photograph on page 14 of The Jakarta Post of March 21, subheaded Facing Off showing some "protesters" complaining about EU plans to "liberalize the blocs services market".

These people may have got their picture in the papers with their stupid get-ups, but has it never occurred to them and the many other "protesters" about much more serious matters that all they do is damage their cause by dressing up like clowns?

It is particularly popular among student "protesters" in Indonesia, and it grieves me to see "skulls", etc., being subject to mockery just for the sake of attention without any thought as to what the average reader will make of them.

They are not even vaguely amusing, just self-indulgent playacting by the immature which can achieve nothing for the cause they purport to represent and help newspaper photo editors short of real news material fill space.

Perhaps, in future, your lens people can expose them for what they are by ripping off the masks, shooting the scene all the while, and we can start putting a stop to such childish opportunism and get readers to concentrate on the real issues and even encourage true protesters not to employ juvenile imagery, which only appeals to other juveniles, and so gain respect for their cause.

CHRISTOPHER R MCRAE Jakarta