RI bars Japanese scholar Kunio from entering

RI bars Japanese scholar Kunio from entering

JAKARTA (JP): Renowned Japanese scholar Yoshihara Kunio has
been refused entry into Indonesia.

He was to enter the country on Sunday, an executive of the
Jakarta office of the Kyoto University, Igarashi, told The
Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

He said Kunio, a historian, had intended to meet friends in
Indonesia, one of a number of stops in Asia, and he was to land
at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Sunday on a flight
from Bangkok.

But Kunio failed to appear at the airport, and later
telephoned Igarashi from Bangkok to say he had landed at
Soekarno-Hatta but was told by immigration officials he could not
enter the country, for unclear reasons, and had returned to
Bangkok.

"I regret the ban (on Kunio's entrance)," Igarashi said.
"Things are already safe, why are entry bans still existent?"

Other people that were once banned from entering the country,
such as political observer Benedict Anderson, have recently been
allowed into Indonesia, Igarashi said.

Kunio, who teaches at the Southeast Asian Studies Center at
Kyoto University, he added, was still seeking information on why
he was banned from entering Indonesia.

Historian Onghokham, one of the people Kunio was to meet, on
Monday said, "The banning could either be caused by red-tape
problems or just simply out of stupidity".

The government of former president Soeharto in 1991 banned a
translated version of Kunio's 1988 book titled The Rise of Ersatz
Capitalism in Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press). The
Attorney General's Office then said the book undermined
Soeharto's credibility.

On Thursday, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice's
Directorate General of Immigration, Mursanudin A. Ghani, said he
had no detailed information concerning the refused entry.

"By procedure, if one is barred from entering, it must be
because a government institution ordered it... it could be from
the Armed Forces or the Attorney General's Office," he said.

Recently, Minister of Information Muhammad Yunus said lists of
foreign journalists that were not allowed to enter the country
should no longer be applicable.

Mursanudin said there were currently around 500 people barred
from entering the country, for various reasons, based on requests
from government institutions, while thousands of others had
problems with immigration authorities.

Pramoedya

A number of figures critical of the former government have
also been banned from traveling. One of them is famed author
Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

For the first time in 40 years, Pramoedya will travel outside
Indonesia following an invitation from New York's Fordham
University and the Association of American Publishers to attend
an academic conference on April 24.

On Tuesday, one of his children said so far there was "no
problem" regarding plans to leave for New York.

As well as the academic conference titled "Pramoedya's Voice
in Indonesia and the World", the author will launch the English
language edition of his memoir The Mute's Soliloquy (Hyperion
Press).

The book is a record of the conditions and circumstances that
transformed him from a prominent author into a political prisoner
and later one of Indonesia's internationally recognized voices of
dissidence during Soeharto's New Order. (amd/aan/sim)