For children of marriages between Indonesian nationals and foreign spouses, choosing citizenship is a question of divided loyalty, says Joice Scheunemann Latupapua.

She was referring to her son’s decision to choose Indonesian over the German citizenship he had held since birth.

But when her son Kevin Scheunemann decided to get an Indonesian passport in 2014, the process of naturalization he had to go through turned out to be more complicated and costly than for his German father, who became an Indonesian citizen in 2010, Joice said.

Kevin, a soccer player, missed the opportunity to apply for limited dual citizenship during the four-year window between 2006 and 2010 after the 2006 Citizenship Law was enacted and, therefore, was considered a foreign national.

While Joice’s husband only paid Rp 2.5 million (US$187), Kevin needed to pay Rp 50 million to obtain Indonesian citizenship.

Quiet apart from the cost, Kevin’s naturalization process has taken two years with no certainty as to when it will be completed, Joice said.

“My son hasn’t been able to work for two years [...] He was set to participate in the 2007 President’s Cup soccer championship with Persiba Balikpapan, but the naturalization process has hampered him,” Joice told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

“The naturalization process of [foreign] husbands is simpler and cheaper than that for our children, despite them being half Indonesian. We need [the government] to provide justice,” Joice said.

Kevin’s case was similar to that of Gloria Natapradja Hamel, of French-Indonesian descent, who made headlines in August last year when she was dropped from the prestigious Independence Day national flag-hoisting team, as she only held a French passport.

Gloria’s case led her mother, Ira Hartini Natapradja Hamel, to file a petition asking the Constitutional Court to scrap Article 41 of the 2006 law, which stipulates that children of mixed marriages before 2006 need to register to attain Indonesian citizenship.

Ira argued that the law, which allowed only four years from its enactment until 2010 for the children to be registered, was too restrictive as parents were not aware of the law, causing many children to lose out on the chance of obtaining an Indonesian passport.

But the hopes of such parents and their children were shattered when the court rejected the judicial-review petition on Thursday, on the grounds that the panel of justices could find no legal basis to grant the request.

Justice Anwar Usman said Gloria’s loss of her chance to obtain Indonesian citizenship was through Ira’s own negligence or lack of awareness, by failing to register her child from her marriage to a foreigner, as required by the law. “Negligence cannot be used as a basis to file a petition,” Anwar said during a hearing on Thursday.

Article 41 did not contravene provisions in the 1945 Constitution and it was in fact enacted to ensure legal certainty by giving children of mixed marriages dual citizenship until they turned 18, when they would then be required to choose their citizenship, he said.

Anwar added that children of mixed marriages who missed the period to register were still able to obtain Indonesian citizenship by going through the requirements stipulated in the 2006 Citizenship Law.

While she respected the court’s decision, Ira was worried the ruling meant that more half-Indonesian children would face difficulties in their naturalization process, especially those who lived in small towns or remote areas that did not receive updates from the government regarding the law.

“Despite paying Rp 50 million, many of them have to wait for two to two-and-a-half years without certainty. It’s not fair,” Ira said.

“We want the government to listen to us [...] this is for the sake of Indonesian children. There are many mixed-marriage parents who have both become Indonesian citizens, but their children haven’t.”

Gloria, who has since become an ambassador for the Youth and Sports Ministry, said she hoped the government would stop turning a blind eye to half-Indonesian children. “I know how it feels to be neglected by my own country,” she said.

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