Thomas Wagner, Jakarta – Ever since President Suharto resigned last year during widespread rioting, his successor, B.J. Habibie, has impressed many Indonesians by lifting some of the authoritarian restrictions that they had lived under for decades.
The breakthroughs are one reason that many people were surprised recently when a Japanese scholar was refused permission to enter Indonesia at Jakarta's international airport.
Media soon reported that Yoshihara Kunio's name is on a "blacklist" of 30 banned foreigners that the Suharto regime put together years ago and that Habibie's government still enforces at the request of Indonesia's powerful military.
Kunio's crime? He published a book in 1988 called "The Rise of Ersatz Capitalism in Southeast Asia," which Suharto banned, saying it undermined his credibility.
Since Suharto left office, scores of political prisoners have been freed, dozens of new opposition parties have been formed, the public can now demonstrate peacefully without fearing arrest and newspapers can criticize the government without being shut down.
On June 7, Habibie's party will compete in an election freer than any Suharto would have tolerated. And 23 years after Indonesian forces annexed East Timor, the island is being promised a referendum that could set the stage for independence.
But that leaves the question of why Habibie would continue to enforce the list now that Suharto is out of power.
"The fact that Habibie continues to do this shows how close he remains to Suharto's inability to tolerate opposition. In fact, we wonder: Is Habibie really committed to democracy or only trying to win votes ahead of the election?" asked Frans Winarta, a human rights lawyer.
The list didn't surprise people familiar with Suharto's style of leadership.
The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists described him in 1998 as one of its 10 worst offenders against freedom of speech, along with the premiers of China, Nigeria, Myanmar, Cuba and Belarus.
The blacklist is known to contain the names of activists, other scholars and reporters who had visited East Timor or otherwise displeased the Suharto government.
A Western official in Jakarta who is familiar with the blacklist said it is probably only one of several still in effect. And Indonesian media recently quoted immigration sources as saying that more than 200 foreigners are barred from Indonesia at the request of the military for national security reasons.
Brig. Gen. Sudradjat, the deputy spokesman of Indonesia's armed forces, defended the blacklist of the 30 foreigners.
"That list is not an obstacle to the government's democratic reforms. These are people who condemned or sharply criticized Indonesia in one-sided accounts, without considering our authority or sovereignty," he said.