Modes of extortion

Modes of extortion

After reading A. Djuana's letter (The Jakarta Post July 1,
1995) under the title "New mode of deceit," I began to realize
the many tactics for extracting money which are practiced in
Jakarta. The "trickery" employed by the hoodlums who feign injury
after purposely knocking themselves against the sides of slow-
moving cars and later demand money in compensation for their
"injuries," as related in the letter published in The Jakarta
Post, is certainly not an isolated case.

Recently, I stopped my car at the Sisingamangaraja-Trunojoyo
junction, South Jakarta, waiting for the traffic lights to turn
green. It was rather late at night then and there were very few
cars around.

Suddenly, a rather big, hefty and fierce-looking young man
appeared and approached my car, holding a big stone in his right
hand. Knocking the stone against the windscreen and driver's
window of my Mercedes, he demanded money, shouting "Duit, duit!,"
("money, money!").

However, he took his heels when my wife, sitting next to me,
sounded the horn repeatedly to attract public attention. I thus
managed to escape from his extortion attempt.

But, if that incident involved a hoodlum, I have experienced
another episode of attempted broad day extortion and trickery
involving a white-collared, smartly dressed person of some
authority.

The incident occurred at the Soekarno-Hatta Airport also not
too long ago. I was then sending off an Indonesian domestic
helper who was leaving Indonesia to join her foreign employer in
another country. She had earlier been able to obtain an exemption
from payment of the exit tax (fiscal) normally imposed on
residents leaving Indonesia. The exemption was granted on the
grounds that her stay in Indonesia had been temporary in nature,
considering that she had earlier arrived from a foreign country
and was leaving for another country, after a brief transit in
Indonesia. The exemption was not, of course, obtained free of
charge.

When we reached the Immigration counter at the airport,
however, I was told that the girl needed yet another piece of
paper, as part of the fiscal exemption procedure, before she
could be allowed to pass through the Immigration point.

Bewildered, I rushed with the girl's passport and other
documents to the relevant office, as indicated by the Immigration
officer.

At that office, whilst the case was being processed, I was
asked, in a conversational style, some personal questions -- by a
man who was, apparently, the chief of the staff there. Three of
those questions concerned my country of origin, my place of work
and my address in Jakarta. To my replies to those three
questions, the officer responded by, respectively, indicating how
fortunate I was to have come from a richer country, to be able to
be working in my "enviable" work place and to be privileged
enough to be living at my "elite" residential address in Jakarta.

To each of those statements the officer also added a
suggestion that I should be generous enough to "share my good
fortune" with him and his officers. The suggestion was, in turn,
followed up by a direct request.

However, when finally the whole procedure had been completed
and he sought the expected "share of my good fortune" he had
asked for, I replied -- after having received the domestic
helper's passport and all her documents and making sure that they
were all safely in my hands -- that, perhaps, the next time I
would pay!

I then left his office, and, thereby, escaped the officer's
extortion bid!

NGAN CUK WAK DEME

Jakarta