Foreign travelers told to avoid Indonesia
JAKARTA (JP): Foreign travelers have been advised to stay away from Indonesia, as riots continue to sweep even the normally calm areas across the country, triggering concerns for the already troubled tourism industry.
As the United States urged its nationals to "consider carefully" before traveling to Indonesia, and Japan maintains its level 2 travel warning for the country, tourism-related industries confessed they expected there would be worse to come.
"We expect things to stay this way until the general election in June or until the end of the year," Meity Robot, head of the Jakarta Chapter of the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies, told The Jakarta Post.
"Of course, we don't like to project such pessimism, but we really cannot expect anything if people are still roaming the country provoking riots," she said.
Meity said hotel occupancy rates now averaged at about 10 percent in Jakarta, one of the cities adversely affected by bad press on Indonesia's turmoil.
Other places, like world-renowned Bali, the resort island of Bintan, and the nearby commerce hub of Batam have remained relatively unscathed by the violent frenzy engulfing other areas, she said.
Since the fatal May riots, which culminated in president Soeharto's resignation, Indonesia has been torn by a series of upheavals, some of which many people believe were politically motivated.
The latest was last week's bloody inter-religious clash in the country's eastern island of Maluku, which has claimed over 50 lives.
The violence prompted the United States to warn its nationals of Indonesia's unstable political and economic situation which "is likely to remain so leading up to the June 1999 parliamentary elections and the selection of a new president a few months later."
Australia has advised its citizens intending to travel to Indonesia to be aware of the "likelihood of continuing public disturbances and political demonstrations in Jakarta and in other centers in Indonesia which have the potential to turn violent without warning."
The consular service's travel advice noted an increase in robberies and street crimes in the country.
Japan has not renewed its travel advisory level since the fatal shootings of protesting students around Jakarta's Semanggi junction in November which claimed 16 lives.
But the current level 2 travel advisory status recommends Japanese suspend all nonessential travel to all destinations in Indonesia, except Bali.
Japan normally imposes the most stringent travel advisory to its citizens.
After the May riots, it imposed a level 3 travel warning, banning all travel to Indonesia. In September, it downgraded the warning to traveling with caution, level 1, until the Semanggi incident.
The spokesman for Japan's Information and Cultural Section, Shigeya Aoyama, said the warning level could go as high as level 5, the necessity to evacuate the country, if conditions worsened.
The manager of tour operators Vista Ekspres, Rudyanto, said on Wednesday that three international cruise liners which were scheduled to berth in Maluku's capital of Ambon next month had changed their original plans.
Vista was supposed to operate city tours in Ambon for the passengers of the three cruise ships bearing U.S. flags, Rudyanto said.
"But how can we give a tour of a burnt out city?" he said.
Vista would offer instead other destinations, such as Manado in North Sulawesi, if the cruise ships still wanted to stop in Indonesia, he said.
Rudyanto said the cruise operators might choose to avoid Indonesia altogether and take longer route instead. (das)