Adisti Sukma Sawitri, Jakarta – The government is wooing back Indonesian students who lost their citizenship while studying abroad more than 40 years ago, during the failed coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Justice and Human Rights Minister Hamid Awaluddin said Thursday that the exiles would not be prosecuted, but would have to pay their own way home.

The former students, who are now in their 70s and mostly living in France and the Netherlands, were accused of being affiliated with PKI because they were studying in China and the former Soviet Union.

After refusing to allow them to return several times for political reasons, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration is planning to welcome them back with minimal red tape.

"The President has a good spirit of reconciliation and their return is possible under our new citizenship law," Hamid said at a media briefing.

Under the law, Indonesians who were forced to lose their citizenship may re-attain it without a naturalization process, by simply making a request to the Justice and Human Rights Ministry.

Hamid said he would fly to the Netherlands soon to talk to the former students and ask them to come back. "Hopefully, the process will be easier and will not have to involve government to government talks, since it is our personal problem as a country," he said.

During the 1970s, hundreds of Indonesian students became stateless after the New Order regime revoked their passports and denied their citizenship.

The effort to bring the former students back started during the administration of president Abdurrahman Wahid. Abdurrahman considered the New Order's decision to exile the students a terrible mistake, arguing that they were not to blame for what happened in the failed revolution of 1965. Five years later, the country is ready to bring them home.