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Indonesian authorities, in coordination with the Ministry of Interior, have decided to step up efforts to curb the practice of temporary marriages between Saudis and Indonesian women.
That the phenomenon of such temporary marriages has been on the rise is evident from the increasing number of Saudi tourists to Indonesia in the past three years, ringing alarm-bells among officials. Taking serious note of the situation, the authorities have decided that such couples who get married without taking prior approval of the Ministry of Interior should be liable for prosecution.
The authorities also decided not to register the name of the father in the birth certificates of children born out of such wedlock.
Muhammad Al-Shamrani, first secretary at the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta, said the Indonesian government intended to bring in a legislation which would empower authorities to prosecute a Saudi married to an Indonesian woman without prior official permit from the Ministry of Interior.
Speaking to a local newspaper, Al-Shamrani said the authorities will only register the name of the mother on birth certificates of newborns conceived by marriage without prior approval.
“The objective of these measures is to combat temporary marriages of all kinds,” he said, adding that Indonesian laws ban such marriages in the first place.
Calling on citizens not to get into such marriages, Al-Shamrani said: “We appeal to those who married without prior approval to rectify their status and document their marriages through the Ministry of Interior and the the competent government authority in Indonesia.”
Al-Shamrani said there were government agencies in the Kingdom that enjoyed jurisdictional authority to subject children of such couples to DNA testing to establish parenthood, if necessary.
Mustafa Al-Mubarak, the Saudi Ambassador to Jakarta, revealed recently that the Ministry of Interior had decided to dispatch special envoys to Indonesia to examine the DNA of children claiming to be the sons of Saudi citizens in the event of the latter’s death. This was being done in cases where heirs of deceased Saudis denied their father’s marriage with Indonesian women.
Al-Mubarak said directives were issued at the highest level making rectification of such marriages mandatory. Recent statistics released by the Ministry of Justice revealed that there were 23 such cases of Saudi-Indonesian marriages.