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Indonesia to keep child sex offenders at bay
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Aiming high: Children play basketball in the yard of the Indonesia Child Care Foundation's (Yayasan Peduli Anak/YPA) headquarters in West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. (JP/Panca Nugraha)
I
ndonesia, along with other Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia and Thailand, has long been seen as a haven for pedophiles, including those coming from Western countries.
In March, the nation was shocked when the Jakarta Police uncovered a closed Facebook group of some 7,000 members alleged to have shared child pornography since last year. Some of them, the police said, are believed to be foreigners.
However, foreigners suspected or convicted of pedophilia will now no longer find it easy to prey on Indonesian children, with the government having stepped up efforts to stop the influx of sexual predators into the country.
The immigration office has intensified information exchange with other countries to prevent suspected and convicted pedophiles from entering the archipelago.
Director General of Immigration Ronny Sompie told The Jakarta Post on Monday that Indonesian immigration authorities had prevented sex offenders from entering the country with the help of information shared by other countries.
“As we don’t know who are suspected or convicted pedophiles, this kind of information comes in handy,” Ronny said.
The office recently announced that it had denied entry to 107 suspected and convicted pedophiles during the first half of the year. More than 80 percent of them were Australians. The rest were Americans, French, Portuguese and South Africans.
