Immigration told to stop non-govt sponsored pilgrims
JAKARTA (JP): Immigration has been ordered to prevent people from departing for Saudi Arabia if they are not government- sponsored Haj pilgrims.
Some 14,000 people are believed to have made arrangements for the pilgrimage with unlicensed tour operators in Indonesia and Singapore and the Saudi government has warned the Indonesian government that these people may be deported on arrival.
Minister of Religious Affairs Tarmizi Taher said yesterday that he had asked for the Ministry of Justice's cooperation in preventing these people from leaving the country.
The Ministry of Justice oversees the Directorate General of Immigration.
A record 157,000 pilgrims this year are traveling under special issue brown passports to distinguish them from the green passports of ordinary travelers.
In the past, the so called "green passport" pilgrims were tolerated because their numbers were small and the number of Indonesian pilgrims traveling under the government program was also still below the maximum of 170,000 set by the Saudi government for Indonesia.
Non-official pilgrims have become a flourishing business for innovative tour operators who provide the package cheaper than the Rp 6.9 million charged by the government. They also offer additional perks, such as combining their trip with visits to Europe.
The government program uses planes chartered by the national carrier Garuda Indonesia. The tour operators use scheduled flights.
This year the number of Indonesian pilgrims has nearly hit quota, stretching the facilities provided by the Saudi authorities for Indonesians.
Riyadh last week pressed Indonesia to control green passport pilgrims and warned that they might be subject to deportation on arrival.
It was not immediately clear how the 14,000 pilgrims had obtained visas from the Saudi embassies.
Tarmizi said the government was concerned with ensuring that the available quota goes to people who travel under the government's pilgrimage program.
He also recalled that many green passport pilgrims last year met with some problems because some of the facilities normally accorded to pilgrims were denied to them.
Green passport
The order to prevent green passport pilgrims from leaving the country was taken to spare them from being deported by the Saudi authorities, he said.
He said many of them had booked their tours with illegal operators out of ignorance.
Tarmizi made his comments yesterday after a meeting with Minister of Information Harmoko, who will be this year's Amirul Haj, the head of the Indonesian haj contingent.
Meanwhile, a former legislator questioned the basis of the Saudi threat to deport the green passport pilgrims, saying that the move may be unwise, the Antara news agency reported.
T.H.M. Saleh said many of these pilgrims may be Indonesians who are working or studying overseas and will be making the trip direct from there.
"What about these people. Would they also be deported?" asked Saleh, formerly representative of the United Development Party faction. "Where would they be deported, since they did not come from Indonesia?" (01)