American singer-songwriter Kina Grannis gained an international following thanks to her incredible popularity on Youtube, and in September of last year she and her band came to Jakarta to play the first show in what was supposed to be a concert tour that would take her to six cities in Southeast Asia.
But the rest of the tour never happened. The musician was forced to cancel the rest of the concerts, and put her entire life on hold, after she and her bandmates got sucked into a bureaucratic nightmare over a visa issue with the Indonesian government and were unable to leave the country for 100 days.
Over the weekend, Grannis finally broke her silence about the incident in a post on her website titled “100 Days in Jakarta”. It’s a long read, filled with heartache and sadness, but surprisingly very little anger or negativity towards Indonesia or the Indonesian government. It’s well worth reading the entire thing, but this is the passage in which she describes the start of her ordeal:
The Jakarta show is great. I meet lots of lovely people at the meet and greet afterwards. I’m feeling good. Then, out of nowhere, a group of Immigration officials walk onto the stage and confiscate our passports. They send us back to our hotel, no explanation given.
We manage a troubled sleep that night, with no idea what’s going on. The next day, the tour promoters (the people that invited us out to Asia and are in charge of the tour) assure us that the issue is nearly resolved and that we’ll be flying out to our next stop in Taiwan that night. But that night passes, and so does the next, and the next.
After a few excruciating days of waiting, we’re brought in to the Immigration Office for one-on-one questioning. During my interrogation, I learn that our tour promoters failed to get us work visas, and that as a result of playing our concert we have committed visa fraud — a crime, they inform me, that is punishable by a $35,000 fine per person and 5 years in prison. These are shocking words to hear, but since this alleged crime had been committed with neither intent nor any knowledge of it on our part, it seems too outlandish to be an actual threat, and I am convinced once I’ve cleared up this misunderstanding everything will be okay. I explain that our tour promoters had ensured us we did have the correct visas, and in the event that was not true, our contract with them clearly states it was their responsibility to secure the visas–not ours. The officials don’t seem to care. Our names are on the documents, so they are holding us accountable. They lock away our passports and open a criminal investigation.
Grannis is classy enough not to mention the name of the tour promoter who plunged them into the Kafkaesque ordeal by failing to secure the proper work permits, but that promoter would be Creon Asia (we have reached out to them for comment).
According to Grannis, the promoter constantly promised that the problem was almost resolved and that they would be ready to fly out and continue the tour the next day, a promise that was broken again and again, leaving the musician and her band in a state of agonizing legal limbo and financial hardship, with the threat of imprisonment always looming.
After 3.5 months of this, Grannis and her bandmates were suddenly summoned to a trial a week before Christmas and pronounced guilty on all charges. But the sentence was eight months probation, which they could serve from America.
The gavel slams against the wooden table and I feel 3 months of sadness and fear and uncertainty clench in my chest and then, finally, release. We walk outside and call our families with the news, tears and relief and disbelief painting our faces. It’s over.
At midnight on December 23rd, after being escorted through the airport by immigration officials, our passports are returned to us at our gate. We board a plane and hold hands as it takes off. We make a toast. We cry happy tears and sad ones, too. None of us can believe it’s actually over. After exactly 100 days in Jakarta, we’re going home.
What is even more remarkable to us than the awfulness of her ordeal that Grannis and her band mates had to go through is the lack of negativity in her account of it. She does not complain bitterly about the Indonesian government and its injustices, nor does she seem to hold any ill will against Indonesians in general, instead mentioning the many wonderful people they met who helped make their time here a little less unbearable.
In fact, Grannis’ post ends with a list of “25 Things I Learned From Being Trapped in Jakarta for 100 Days”, all positive points that include “If you’re still breathing, you have something to be grateful for. Gratitude is the key to everything.” and “Sop Buntut. Mie Dok Dok Jawa. Ayam Goreng. (Let’s hear it for Indonesian food)”.
She even managed to channel the sadness and heartache from her ordeal into two songs she wrote while she was here, “California”, which you can listen to in the video above, and “For Now”, both of which you can download now from iTunes.
We’re so sorry that Grannis and her bandmates had to go through something so awful while they were here, but we’re also totally in awe of her incredibly positivity and having the strength to get through it. We’d like to think we could face something like that with such grace, but just hearing Grannis’ account of her ordeal makes us incredibly angry with the government for handling a simple visa issue in such an unneccesarily harsh way (assuming her account is entirely accurate). Not only does this sort of draconian enforcement of the law make Indonesia look unjust and backwards, it will also make it that much harder to convince foreign performers to perform for their fans here in Indonesia. And frankly, after reading about what happened to Grannis, we couldn’t blame them.
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