Bringing Keris to Indonesia from Overseas

[JustYS]

Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey

Wish I'd known about little bit law a long time ago Yohan.

But on the other hand, educating Customs officers is probably no more pleasant than dealing with them in other ways.

Yes Alan it always good to know the law but like you said sometimes the reality is another thing.

I’ve had a similar experience when bringing my keris to Australia. Two young custom officers look at my customs declaration (in which I ticked weapon) and my B709B form then he pointed out at the B709B form and asked me what is this? I was quite surprised and answered well it was a certification from the police to allow me to import this dagger. He turned to his colleague and asked have you seen this before? His colleague shook his head and left, after while he came back with by the look of it a more senior officer who looked at my form and said ah yes it’s a police permit. He then told me for this kind of dagger normally you don’t need this form but it’s good that you have it and he let me through.

What a relief

[A. G. Maisey]

The senior officer was correct Yohan, you should not need the B709B, before, about 20 years or so back, you did need this doc for everything, but as a follow on from the Port Arthur black op and after John Howard bought back a whole heap of firearms, NSW set out to alter knife legislation.

The first drafts of the new legislation were ludicrous, if introduced they would have resulted in kids wanting pancakes for breakfast at Maccas eating them with their fingers.

Well, a lot of people got pretty upset about this, amongst those people were members of the Antique Arms Collectors Society of Australia, of which I, & a number of legal & para legal people, & also including a judge were/are members.

Reasoned correspondence with politicians and bureaucrats followed & eventually we got new legislation where the focus had shifted from possession to use.

At the moment I think I can say that our NSW knife legislation is reasonable & intelligently drafted.

However, the early days after introduction of this new use-focused legislation were --- in my eyes --- like something out of Monty Python.

For example:- in NSW one must not carry a knife unless it is being carried for a legally identifiable reason. Seems fair to me.

However, the rural town of Goulburn is home to our police training college. One, or maybe more than one, of the instructors at this college had the idea that it would be a useful training exercise for the young gentlemen & women who were training to be police officers to raid the local stock auction & take legal action against all people at that auction who were in possession of a knife.

Australian stockmen, graziers, farmers, in fact virtually all rural workers have a pocket knife --- usually a 3 blade premium stock knife permanently attached to their belt, they put their trousers on in the morning, those trousers come fitted with a 3 blade premium stock knife.

A very great number of people were much offended by the police actions on that day.

I do not know what the final outcome of this idiocy was, but these days it does seem that our police officers have got the right approach.

As you comment Yohan, laws can be reasonable, but the way in which those laws are enforced can sometimes be idiotic.

Customs procedures at Sydney airport have changed a lot over the years, & although I do not really need the B709B these days, I normally do carry one, just in case I get an officious Customs officer.

[Jayaningkurnia]

Thank you both for the candid sharing of your personal experiences.

Indeed when I ran a quick online search from legal point of view pusaka is exempted from the list of items considered to be weapon (and so have no carrying/transport restriction) under UU 12/1951.

That said I'll still declare the keris in my custom declaration and see how it goes - hopefully it will be uneventful. Will update you post-event

[Rick]

It would probably be helpful to bring a copy of your research (UU 12/1951) on the subject along with your keris.

[Jayaningkurnia]

Thank you Rick for the advice.

Just came back from my trip to Yogyakarta - thankfully I was able to brought in the keris rather uneventfully.

The custom officers at the Yogyakarta International Airport were polite and ask the expected questions on the source and intent of bringing the keris. They were respectful in handling the keris for inspection and send me on my way afterward. They did not ask for any paperwork.

[A. G. Maisey]

It did not occur to me that you might fly back into Yogya. I'd guess that Customs might be a bit easier to get along with there than in some other places.

But I really do find the location of the new airport pretty inconvenient. The old one was more or less OK for me --- I need to go to Solo after landing at Yogya --- but that journey to Solo from the new airport really is not great at all, especially after adding on the lead time at Ngurah Rai.

It has made the journey to Solo pretty difficult to do in a day from Sydney. Yeah, I could use other airlines than Garuda, but those other airlines come with pretty big negatives.

[Jayaningkurnia]

Hi Mr. Maisey - perhaps you want to try transiting via Singapore? Scoot offers a daily Singapore-YIA flight and there's plenty of flights between SYD and SIN. It's overnight with the transit but overall it can be a ~13h or so travel duration to Yogya. It's not a full-service though, so will not be as comfortable as Garuda.

Indeed the new airport is further away from city centre (1-1.5h drive), but there's airport shuttle trains that will get you to the Tugu Station in 40 minutes and from that station there are plenty of trains of all classes to Solo (typically takes 45mins - 1h). Of course getting a car and a driver would be more comfortable (albeit longer travel) - it'll probably be a 3 hour drive to Solo.