Thirty-two Indonesians go AWOL in Japan

Thirty-two Indonesians go AWOL in Japan

TOKYO (AFP): Thirty-two Indonesians have disappeared and have presumably overstayed their visas after entering Japan as members of a delegation to a trade fair in Osaka last year, media reports said on Friday.

There is the possibility that they have joined the swelling ranks of illegal workers from other Asian countries, the Jiji Press news agency reported quoting the Osaka immigration bureau.

No officials at the bureau were immediately available to confirm the reports.

The runaways, aged between 20 and 60, came to Japan on Sept. 8 in a 130-strong Indonesian delegation to the Osaka exposition featuring medium and small-scale enterprises in Asia, the reports said.

They failed to show up at Osaka's Kansai International Airport to take a flight home on Sept. 12 and there has been no record of any of the runaways, three of them women, departing Japan.

Their 90-day visas expired in December, the reports said.