Government to review visa-on-arrival policy

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is considering scrapping visas-on-arrival for nationals of several countries including Japan, Australia and South Korea after the countries refused to accord similar treatment to Indonesian citizens.

Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra said on Tuesday that the government would cancel the visa facility for U.S. citizens after the U.S. issued what he called a discriminatory immigration ruling against Indonesians living there.

"We must take firm action against countries that treat us unfairly, so we are reviewing the visa-on-arrival facility for those countries," Yusril said on Tuesday.

Yusril claimed that his move had gained strong support from tourism businesspeople.

"I hope there will be no more resistance from the tourism sector as this issue concerns our dignity as a nation," Yusril told reporters on the sidelines of a national meeting on immigration affairs.

Up until the deadly Bali bombing on Oct. 12, Australians and Japanese made up the bulk of foreign tourists visiting the country.

The government, according to Yusril, had considered introducing a fee for visas-on-arrival or requiring foreigners to apply for visas at Indonesian missions in their respective country.

Yusril said the government was thinking of canceling the visa- on-arrival for American tourists on the grounds that U.S. immigration requirements for Indonesians were arduous and the country had recently taken discriminatory measures against Indonesian staying in the U.S.

"We should no longer be kindhearted to countries that treat us arbitrarily. We must take stern actions against those countries," Yusril said.

The United States included Indonesia last week on a list of countries whose males aged 16 and older must report to their local immigration office as part of its antiterrorism measures.

The move drew strong protest from Indonesian officials who considered the policy discriminatory.

A spokesman for the Directorate General of Immigration at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, Ade A. Dahlan, said the draft of a presidential decree reviewing the visa-on-arrival policy was already in the hands of President Megawati Soekarnoputri, awaiting her approval.

The visa-on-arrival system, under which foreign tourists are allowed to stay in the country for 60 days, was first introduced in 1983 in a bid to attract more foreign tourists.

In September 2002, the Directorate General of Immigration announced a plan to reduce the number of countries whose citizens are entitled to a visa upon arrival but until now a decision had not been made. The citizens of 48 countries are entitled to visas on arrival.

Businessmen, particularly those in the tourism sector, criticized the initial plan, saying it would only hurt tourism, which has been crippled by security problems.

Meanwhile, the director of the Association of the Indonesian Travel and Tour Agencies (ASITA), Meity Robot, urged the government to be selective in scrapping the visa-on-arrival facility.

"At this difficult time after the terrorist attacks (in Bali), we do really need leniency in attracting foreign tourists, not make it difficulty for them to visit the country," she told the Jakarta Post Tuesday.

She warned that Indonesia might not be able to compete with Malaysia and Thailand in luring foreign visitors if it revoked the visa-on arrival policy.

"It's not a problem for us if the government removes the visa- on-arrival policy for the U.S. and Australia as their governments have been very unfriendly to us," she said.

But she objected to the plan to disentitle Japanese and South Koreans from the facility, saying that the two were important markets for Indonesia's tourism and it would certainly hurt local tourism should the plan be realized.

"We have just carried out road shows to South Korea and Japan to convince their citizens to visit Indonesia. If the government goes ahead with its plans our efforts will be useless," she said.