Under the bill, NGOs in the country could also not receive foreign funding except with permission from the government.
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Under a bill on societal organizations currently being deliberated in parliament, foreign non-governmental organizations will not be allowed to solicit financial donations from members of the Indonesian public, a legislator said.

"Foreign NGOs that violate the prohibition will face sanctions," Abdul Malik Harmain, chairman of the House of Representatives (DPR)`s Special Committee on the Societal Organizations Bill said here Monday.

Under the bill, NGOs in the country could also not receive foreign funding except with permission from the government, he said.

Abdul made the statements when commenting on reports that a number of Indonesian citizens who had been regularly making financial contributions to the international environmental NGO Greenpeace had stopped doing so.

They had ceased their donations to the Holland-based NGO as they longer trusted the authenticity of its motivations.

One of such disillusioned Greenpeace contributors in Jakarta, Nina Marlina, said she had been a regular donor from 2009 to October 2011.

"I have stopped making the monthly contributions. It was only recently that I learned Greenpeace`s motivations are not pure but full of foreign interests," Nina, an employee of a chemical company in Jakarta, said.

Nina who held a Greenpeace contributor`s identity cars bearing the number ID 21067 said she agreed to become a regular donor when visiting a Greenpeace stand at an exhibition at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC). She agreed because Greenpeace people told her the NGO was fighting to save the environment.

But after learning that Greenpeace was in reality serving foreign interests, she decided to stop being a donor. "I regret having been a contributor. Now I think, I would rather donate money to orphans," she said.

As a regular financial contributor, Nina used to receive a monthly Greenpeace bulletin but there was never a financial accountability report and this was another reason she lost trust in the NGO.

Another former Greenpeace contributor, Bagus Adhitya Rama, in a an open letter to a national newspaper, said he used to donate through a Citibank Gold credit card.

But after he had stopped his donations, he continued to be charged for the purpose by Citibank. "This was weird. How could Greenpeace have continued to receive money from me through my credit card while I had already stopped my credit card membership?" he said.

The answer he got from a Citibank staffer was that it was done "for safety reasons", Bagus said.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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