balinews

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Feb 14, 2010
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If you are a Filipino woman hoping to have a nice vacation in Bali, be careful.

Two Filipino tourists, one of them a blogger, suffered “rude and unfair” treatment “akin to racial profiling” at the hands of immigration officers in Bali, Indonesia, recently, a nonprofit organization said yesterday.

The Blas F. Ople Policy Center, which assists distressed overseas Filipinos workers, sought the help of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in “obtaining justice” for the two Filipino women who were interrogated and bodily searched at the Bali airport.

“The Philippines and Indonesia share a deep and warm friendship. The unprofessional and unethical behavior of a few immigration agents in Bali towards Filipino tourists must immediately be corrected because it smacks of racial or ethnic profiling, something that is unexpected of a true friend like Indonesia,” said former Labor Undersecretary Susan Ople, head of the Ople Center.

Ople said the two women, who preferred to remain anonymous, went to Bali as tourists. But in the immigration line, they were singled out and ushered into the immigration office where they were subjected to a bag and body search “without justification.”

“Meet my Filipina friend. She was caught hiding packs of heroin in her luggage,” one of three immigration officers reportedly told the two women while pointing to pictures of arrested drug traffickers inside the immigration holding room.

Ople said the two women were offered something to drink but they refused and then another immigration officer started asking questions.

“Do you know her? Do you take drugs? Do you have drugs hidden in your body?” the second officer asked them.

When the Filipino blogger vehemently denied knowing the woman in the picture or having drugs in her luggage, the immigration officer proceeded to check her bag, Ople said.

“The officer searched my things thoroughly. I was just looking at him. He checked every compartment of my luggage too,” Ople quoted the tourist as saying.

“After he messed with all my things and found nothing, I asked the officer what was wrong and why he was checking us. He just answered, ‘because the two of you are beautiful girls,’” the blogger added.

In a cubicle in the office, a woman immigration officer told the blogger’s companion to undress.

Ople said the woman officer poked the Filipino woman’s abdomen to check if she had ingested illegal drugs.


2 Filipina tourists decry ?welcome? at Bali airport | Inquirer News
 

sakumabali

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Apr 2, 2010
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The conversation is weird of course, rude ok but unfair? More or less the same happened to me in Frankfurt too last time and I'm a german, I really don't want to defend immigration officers (many of them are a bunch of lazy, uncapable, c****pt fellows) but many don't speak english very well maybe they just wanted to be friendly who knows? It sucks to get an interrogation etc but many australian guys got arrested too and they're not asian women, so is this "racial profiling"?

"a woman immigration officer" searched them so where's the problem? Tourists arrived on indonesian sovereign territory so they've the right to search you. Everybody wants a safer and cleaner Bali / Indonesia and want the police to do their job and arrest terrorists / criminals etc, so let them do their job, it's getting much better recently (they starting to refuse bribes :icon_wink: cause they worry about their pensions), as long they're friendly just making bad jokes and not arrest them, hours and hours in a cell somewhere without any reason....