Wrong stuff for Your Letters

Wrong stuff for Your Letters

During the month of February we have seen the best and worst uses of the "Your Letters" section of The Jakarta Post.

Mr. Link Luckett's early February letter regarding puasa resulted in several spontaneous letters from readers which increased my knowledge about this yearly event. This, to my way of thinking, is the way "Your Letters" should work: an idea or opinion stated with feedback from readers leading to a greater understanding among us all (even if Mr. Luckett did cop out in his final letter).

The worst use of "Your Letters" is being displayed with boring regularity by the Myanmar Embassy whose twice a week or more diatribes sully the use of this column. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't an Embassy a political entity? If it is and it spouts the "party line" of its government, doesn't that fall into the realm of politics? And if that is true, why is The Jakarta Post allowing another country's government to state its policies in the "Your Letters" section? This chap from the Myanmar Embassy is not writing as a private citizen (as Mr. Luckett did), but as a representative of his government -- hardly the stuff the "Your Letters" section should be made of.

I'd like to suggest that if the folks from this Embassy insist on writing their paranoid fantasies, that they be allowed to do so with the caveat that The Jakarta Post put them somewhere else in the newspaper. I agree with Mr. Gary Gentry's comment, except that when I see a letter from that Embassy I don't bother to read it; we get enough propaganda from television adverts.

JOHN R. FENTON

Jakarta