HONG Kong's sex hotline services to Indonesia have been blocked because the Muslim country fears they will damage national morals.
A spokesman for the state telecommunications company, PT Indosat, said yesterday the move was in response to calls from parliamentarians for more controls on the services.
They were concerned about the possible impact on moral standards if their people were allowed easy access to such hotlines from Hong Kong.
A member of the ruling Golkar party, Muhammed Muas, was quoted as saying: ''Sex telephones are a form of cultural infiltration. They could ruin national morals.'' The Indosat spokesman said they had decided to block the sex lines since Thursday, adding that under international law any country had the right to block lines deemed harmful to it.
He said that although there was no official ban on domestic sex lines in Indonesia, he believed there were no such services in existence.
A spokesman for Hong Kong Telecom, which provides the international telephone network used by overseas sex lines, said these international Infoline services were not required to follow regulations applicable to local lines, which forbade extremely obscene contents.