Indonesia aims to shutdown all of the country’s red-light districts by 2019 in a bid to eradicate prostitution in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, the Jakarta Post said late Tuesday quoting the social affairs minister.

The government had already closed 68 red-light districts, while another 100 would be closed down within three years, said Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa. Despite being illegal, prostitution is rampant in most major Indonesian cities.

Jakarta’s governor has started closing down a major prostitution hub in the northern part of the capital, with evictions planned for Sunday.

In 2014, the mayor of Indonesia’s second-largest city of Surabaya shutdown what was believed to be Southeast Asia’s biggest red-light district.

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  • Jeremy Britton

    Good luck! You can outlaw the world’s oldest profession but you’ll never eliminate it. We’ve seen in the last few years that you can’t eliminate online sharing (pirate bay), ride sharing (uber) and the “war on drugs” (USA & others) has been a dismal failure. The nations who win are those who accept and organise: prostitutes in the Netherlands are registered and pay tax. All drugs are decriminalised in Portugal and drug use has declined steadily for 13 years.