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Indonesia lobbies for larger haj quota from S. Arabia
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Finally returned home: Several Indonesian haj pilgrims, who had apparently been deceived by tour operators, board a bus after arriving at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, on Sunday. A total of 177 Indonesian pilgrims were given fake Philippine haj passports to travel to Saudi Arabia, but they were arrested at the Manila airport. One hundred and sixty-eight of them returned to Indonesia on Sunday. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
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ndonesia, the largest sender of haj pilgrims to Saudi Arabia, has made an initial attempt to request the transfer of unused haj quotas to the world’s most populous Muslim-majority population.
The Indonesian government is seeking the option following the arrest of 177 of its citizens in Manila for attempting to go on the haj using unused seats of the Philippine’s haj quota by falsifying their immigration documents.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo held a bilateral meeting with Saudi Arabian Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman on Sunday in Hangzhou, China, prior to the start of the G20 summit on the same day.
In a short courtesy call meeting that lasted 20 minutes, Jokowi asked the deputy crown prince about the possibility of Indonesia securing the unused haj quotas of other countries or obtaining a larger haj quota.
“Before we start discussions with those countries with surplus quota, we must first talk with Saudi Arabia,” Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said after the bilateral meeting.
Refusing to wait for decades to go on the haj, hundreds of Indonesians have been tempted to fulfill one of the five pillars of Islam by using services from bogus travel agents working with syndicates in Manila to get haj visas from the country.
Although Indonesia, the country with the biggest Muslim population, remains the largest sender of pilgrims with 168,800 people this year, there are still around 3 million prospective pilgrims on the haj
waiting list.
Indonesia previously submitted a proposal to increase its haj quota, but to no avail on account of ongoing renovations at the al-Haram Grand Mosque in Mecca that began in 2013, the year Indonesia saw its quota cut by 20 percent to 168,800.
Indonesia is home to 205 millions Muslims. Even with its previous quota of 211,000, it would take around 14 years to accommodate all the waiting pilgrims. At the same time, more people register for the haj every year.
As Indonesia has to wait for the renovations to finish to return to its quota of 211,000, it has found a new trick to cheer up the waiting pilgrims by attempting to ask Saudi Arabia for the unused haj quotas of other countries, including the Philippines.
Meanwhile in Manila, Jakarta representatives have secured the return 168 of the 177 arrested pilgrim, leaving nine others who are helping local law enforcers investigate the haj syndicate in the Philippines.
The proposal was made on account of the long line of pilgrimage applicants in a number of areas in the archipelago, Jokowi told Muhammad in the meeting.
Prospective pilgrims registering for the haj this year in Sidrap regency in South Sulawesi have to wait until 2056 to get their turn.
Further talks on the issue will begin as Muhammad, who is also the defense minister and second deputy premier, has instructed his foreign minister to discuss it with Retno.
Retno expressed her optimism for the discussion. She added that authorities in Manila still needed the help of the nine remaining arrested pilgrims to uncover the alleged haj syndicate in the country.
“Therefore, with the return of 168 Indonesians, the issue has mostly been settled,” Retno said.
The Religious Affairs Ministry’s haj management director general Abdul Djamil said if Indonesia’s request to attain unused haj quotas was approved by the kingdom, then Saudi Arabia had to input the additional quotas into its electronic haj system database every year to avoid administrative problems.
“We cannot ask for unused quotas directly from the [target] countries,” he said, adding that Saudi Arabia only issued visas according to the number of pilgrims in the electronic haj system.
