Child addicts at heart of Indonesia anti-smoking suit

Anti-tobacco advocates in Indonesia plan to file a class action lawsuit this month using cases of child addicts in the hope of forcing tougher regulations on a society where one in three people smokes.

It is a rare attempt of its kind to constrain a tobacco industry which looks to the world's fourth most populous country and its growing appetite for cigarettes to replace dwindling sales elsewhere.

The suit against tobacco companies and the Indonesian government argues that feeble regulation has left children dangerously exposed to the risks of smoking.

"There are ... kids who have fallen victim to the impact of cigarette companies and smoking. They are addicted. In the context of people's rights, the society has been disadvantaged by the tobacco industry," head of the National Commission for Child Protection, Arist Merdeka Sirait, said.

Indonesia is something of a paradise for both smokers and tobacco companies, with the world's fifth largest population of smokers. It is a widely tolerated habit and one which even in this relatively poor archipelago most can afford to feed.

And it is getting more popular as the economy grows. In 1995, one in four Indonesians smoked. Fifteen years later it had risen to one in three.

That in turn has tempted international tobacco firms to join the hugely profitable home-grown ones such as Gudang Garam, P T Djarum and Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna, which is now part of Philip Morris International.

The government even gives tax incentives for the manufacture of hand-rolled cigarettes because it provides such a major source of employment in east Java where the local firms congregate.

Sampoerna said it had only seen reports of the planned lawsuit and could not comment. Other producers also had no immediate comment.

A spokesman for the Federation of Indonesian Cigarette Manufacturers said he had heard of the suit but declined comment because it was not aimed at the federation.

"If a child is smoking is that the problem of the advertisement or the parents?" spokesman Hasan Aoni said.

ADDICTION TRANCE

Ilham Hadi has become something of a poster child for the anti-smoking campaign.

He began smoking aged four when his mother Nenah said she gave him 3,000 rupiah ($0.32) to buy snacks at school. He bought a cigarette instead.

The addiction has since blackened his teeth, damaged his skin and, his friends say, made the now nine-year old a useless soccer player and slow, wheezy runner.

"He sometimes bangs on the window at 4 a.m. in the morning to buy a cigarette," said Iin Indriyani, who runs a tiny store from the front room of her home around 100 yards (meters) up a winding path from the two-room house where Hadi's family lives.