Jakarta – A long-time critic of former president Suharto was allowed to return to Indonesia Sunday but the euphoria was overshadowed by fears of a new clampdown on dissent after police tried to break up a human rights seminar.

George Aditjondro returned to a hero's welcome for a week's visit after three years in Australia, where he had fled after being put on the police wanted list for slandering Suharto. "My plans are to assess, also to absorb the sense of freedom and the sense of democracy which is now so strong in the young people of Indonesia," the 52-year-old professor said. He was speaking to journalists after being engulfed by a group of some 35 East Timorese, who swarmed around him and triumphantly lifted him from the floor of the airport.

But leading human rights figures warned of a possible return to authoritarianism after police on Saturday marched unannounced into a seminar entitled "Unity in Diversity" and demanded it close down since no police permit had been granted. After an hour of negotiations involving the national police chief it was allowed to proceed, participants told AFP. "This is the worst thing to happen in the reform era," one participant quoted one of the organizers – the chairman of the Institute for Human Rights Studies, Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara – as saying. "Whether one realizes it or not, a return of authoritarianism is still possible."

Marzuki Darusman, the deputy head of the government-funded National Commission on Human Rights, told newspapers later. Darusman said he had to speak with national police chief Lieutenant General Rusmanhadi before the seminar was allowed to proceed. A jubilant Aditjondro said that while he was in Indonesia he would launch his new book, "The two peaks of corruption, collusion and nepotism in the new order regime: from Suharto to Habibie." President B.J. Habibie, a Suharto protege, was handed the presidency by Suharto when he stepped down May 21.

Aditjondro, now a teacher of the sociology of corruption at Australia's Newcastle University, is well known in Jakarta for his research – disseminated on the Internet – into both the wealth of Suharto and Habibie.

He said he would return to Australia after attending a regional human rights seminar at the invitation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute. He would also visit East Timorese rebel leader Xanana Gusmao in prison and see his family in the Javanese city of Yogyakarta. "Let us say 'viva' to the university students' movement," he said, adding that he owed his return to their determination not to allow Suharto, who stepped down amid massive demonstrations May 21, run for a seventh term as president.

Aditjondro, who was dismissed from Java's Staya Wacana University in 1995 when he was put on the police wanted list, also slammed the current Habibie government inquiry into Suharto's wealth as "cosmetic". "What we see now is that the whole Habibie government, from the president on to the attorney general, is being puppeted by Suharto," he said. "Suharto should be investigated by the police, which would mean to give him a letter of summation accusing or suspecting him as a suspect for having broken the laws of corruptions. "What is going on now is just theater," he added.