So what is this Police Certificate anyways?

In Indonesia, it is called Surat Tanda Melapor, better known as a Certificate of Police Registration which concerns any foreigner (tourist, visitor, resident, guest of resident, etc), though the foreigner himself is not forced to apply in person. This is a report to the police that states where a foreigner is living and for how long.

The regulation Chapter 10, Peraturan Pemerintah nomor 31 tahun 1994 says,

Setiap orang yang memberikan kesempatan orang asing menginap di tempat kediamannya wajib melaporkan kepada Kantor Kepolisian Republik Indonesia atau Pejabat Pemerintah Daerah setempat dalam jangka waktu 24 (dua puluh empat jam) sejak tanggal kedatangan orang asing tersebut.

Anyone who accommodates a foreigner is obligated to report to the local police office within 24 hours of the guest’s arrival.

This means that the person who gives the foreigner/s shelter (hotel, wife, friend, etc) has to report your residence within 24 hours after your arrival. Here there is no notion of type or duration of stay. The person who provides you accommodation reports to the police. This is a report about one person, giving shelter to a foreigner, to the police. This is not in any way an authorization asking to shelter someone to a particular date. This just means that you don’t have to be reported again as long as you don’t change your address. However, if one forgets to report your residence after 24 hours after your arrival, that person will receive the penalties listed in the Capter 60, undang undang nomor 9 tahun 1992:

Setiap orang yang memberi kesempatan menginap kepada orang asing dan tidak melaporkan kepada Pejabat Kepolisian Negara Republik Indonesia atau Pejabat Pemerintah Daerah setempat yang berwenang dalam 24 (dua puluh empat) jam sejak kedatangan orang asing tersebut, dipidana dengan pidana kurungan paling lama 1 (satu) tahun atau denda paling banyak Rp 5.000.000,- (lima juta rupiah).

Penalty is 1 year imprisonment or penalty fee of Rp.5,000,000.

None of the two laws quoted tie the length of the STM to the length of an Ijin Tinggal or Ijin Kunjungan. It is submitted to the length of stay reported. What some crooked police officials may try is to make you believe that the article 61 UU 9/1992 concerns STM and that you have to report every 30 days. This is totally not true. Article 61 concerns people with an Ijin Tinggal (residence visa), not those on a visit visa (Ijin Kunjungan).

To summarize:

- If you are a KITAS/KITAP holder (resident visa), report to the police for SKLD (30 days maximum after the issuance of your Ijin Tinggal) and report any change in your residency within 7 days of its occurrence. Make sure that the person who provides you accommodation (even if it your wife/son or whoever in the family) reports you within the 24 hours and has an STM remitted. You need to do it again only if you change to a new accommodation.

- If you are holder of an Ijin Kunjungan or VoA (visit visa), you are only concerned by the STM in the conditions defined above.

The several bombings by terrorists in Bali and Jakarta few years ago has obviously left a deep shock (if not a scar) in the hearts of the rest of the people of the world. Australians and Americans were the target of the past bombings about 7-8 years ago. One day we were known as one of the most friendly people in the world, the next we were extremists.

The truth is we grieved with the world over what had happened. We cried with the world. With our dark brown eyes we turned around to our terrified western friends and looked them worried in their eyes, hoping to find even the slightest remains of trust in us.

For years of our existence as a nation we were known as one of the most friendly people in the world and nothing extreme like those attacks had ever happened. It took “only” 2 bombings 7-8 years ago by a small radical group and ever since, the rest of the Indonesian people have been labeled by a great part of the world as monstrous extremists.

The fact that the world had always labeled us as the “largest Moslem nation” does not help at all. It is nothing but a distorted understanding of who we are really. Even though the majority of our population is indeed Muslims, no reference to Islam teachings is made in the Indonesian constitution. This country is not a Muslim nation. To the world this misleading label may seem to be something trivial. But the fact is, Indonesians are hurting deeper than anybody outside the country can ever imagine due to this label. This false label has associated the whole nation with the small radical group that was responsible for the bombings 7-8 years ago in Bali and Jakarta. This label has put all innocent citizens on the stand and charged them guilty side by side with the bombers.

I am not sure if our government has done enough to set things straight. The fact is there are still so many distorted opinions about our country as a dangerous place to be besides for the reason that it is located on the ‘ring of fire’. They will kill you if you dare speak your mind! You will be dead if they find you drinking alcohol! You are a Christian/ Jew/ whatever and they will threaten to kill you unless you deny your faith! Those who convert into any other religion than Islam will be hunted down for the rest of their lives!

I am a Christian myself. Many of my families are Muslims. And I am the creator of this blog because of this reason:

It has been unbelievable to hear that there actually are people out there who think like that about Indonesians. The bombings from 7-8 years ago must have traumatized them deeply.

I can not stress this enough: the truth about the real Indonesia is that it is a Republic. Although the majority of the population (total population about 240 million people) are Muslims, nowhere in the Indonesian constitution says anything that makes a reference to Islam. Indonesia is a republic, with an elected legislature and president.

You will not find dead bodies hung in the streets for stealing bread.

You will not find men or women who got their tongue cut out for not telling the truth.

You will not see new Christian converts being hunted down to be killed by their Muslim families.

You will not see a new Muslim convert dead in the streets for leaving Jesus Christ.

You may see women with veils or men with sorbans walking down the street. But you may also meet evangelizing Christians in bars who cares so much about your soul that they introduce their God to you.

You may hear about Muslim husbands who has 3-4 wives or even more. But you may also witness Christians having a second wife whom he married illegally through cultural ceremonies.

You may hang out in a bar and meet Muslims and Christians getting drunk together. You may see a Moslem man and his Christian wife living peacefully together for 37 years like my parents. But you may also see two people of those two different religions hating each others’ guts so much that one kills the other.

This place is not an oppressed country as you hear about Afghanistan or Irak. But then again, unless you have been here yourself and lived here and fallen in love, you will always be trapped in the distorted view about Indonesia created by the small group of extremists who have long moved on after the bombings and are now laughing in hell.

This blog is dedicated to the people of Indonesia who are nothing but peaceful, tolerant and friendly souls, misunderstood by a hurt world.

Enjoy your stay,

Elisheva Wiriaatmadja.

Presenting to the World: The Real Indonesia!

Across its many islands, Indonesia consists of distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. The Javanese are the largest and most politically dominant ethnic group. As a unitary state and a nation, Indonesia has developed a shared identity defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a majority Muslim population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesia’s national motto, “Bhinneka tunggal ika“ (”Unity in Diversity” literally, “many, yet one”), articulates the diversity that shapes the country.

The word Indonesia comes from the Latin ‘Indus’ which means “India” and the Greek ‘Nesos’ which means “Island”. The name far predates the formation of the independent nation Indonesia to the 18th century. George Earl, an English ethnologist, suggested the term Indunesians to refer to the inhabitants of the “Indian Archipelago”. But the Dutch, during their colony were reluctant to use that term. Instead, they were using other terms to refer to Indonesia, one of them was the Netherlands East Indies or the Dutch East Indies (Oost Indies.)

But since 1900, the previous term ‘Indonesia’ become more widely used in academic circles outside the Netherlands and Indonesian nationalist groups adopted this name for political expression. It was Adolf Bastian, a German  scholar from the University of Berlin, who popularized the name through his book, “Indonesien – Oder Die Inseln des Malayischen Archipels”. The first Indonesian scholar who used the name was Suwardi Suryaningrat (Ki Hajar Dewantara), when he established a press bureau in the Netherlands with the name Indonesisch Pers-bureau in 1913.