I felt compelled to write about what I just went through while on a Southeast Asian tour with the death metal band, Malevolent Creation. Even if for no other reason than to make people aware of what can, and did happen to us in Indonesia.
We landed in the city of Surabaya, which is to the south of the country. Our first gig was to be the first show ever by a death metal band in Surabaya. Unfortunately, when the local police saw a couple thousand or so metalheads, they just assumed the worst and shut down the show. That’s where our troubles began…
The next day we flew to Jakarta, which is the capital city. Much more urban and developed than Surabaya, we all felt good about the show, as the overall vibe was positive and good. Nothing could have prepared us for what was to come.
We played the following night to another sizeable crowd, but unbeknownst to us, there was an immigration officer at the show. We later found out that the local police in Surabaya had contacted them prior to our arrival. This is when things got crazy. Within minutes of the end of our set we were rushed away from the venue by our promoter, who had apparently seen the immigration officer at the show. As it turned out, we had played a concert without the proper working visas! Later that night, me and Jay, our bass player walked into our room, only to be followed in by this immigration officer. Keep in mind, he was in plain clothes and drunk! He proceeded to demand our passports and got Jay’s, before I made a quick exit to another room. The promoter then left 4 of us in this room, 2 in another, and told us not to make any noise and not to even answer the door if someone knocked. We were basically prisoners in our own hotel room!
This went on for 6 hours! In that time, we had come up with idea to make an escape to the American Embassy in the morning when it opened at 7:30am. The van that was to take us to our then only way out, didn’t make it on time and immigration showed up with several officers. We demanded that the American embassy send someone to our hotel. We were elated at the site of another American! “SAVE US!!”, we cried! Our hopes were quickly dashed when after a brief conversation between him and the head immigration officer only yielded a “Best of luck to you guys” from our supposed savior! He then gave us paperwork to fill out to notify our families of what was happening. Our level of despair and panic quickly escalated as we where basically arrested and hauled off to their immigration offices, for playing music! As far as we knew, these guys could have beheaded us and no one could do a thing about it! In these countries, this is a reality, not an overblown fantasy. We were living a horror movie nightmare!
After a few hours, which seemed like a few years, our promoter gave us a little bit of hope when he said that this was all about money, that all that these guys wanted was the money that was made from the gig, all of it! They knew that their fear tactics would work, and when your lives are in their hands, it worked well! So after 9 grueling hours of negotiation between the local promoter and this scumbag head immigration worm, we where sent to a hotel to await our deportation the next day. That morning we arrived at the airport before the immigration guys did, and the promoter proceeded to take out a huge wad of cash from his pocket and showed it to us and said, “this is your freedom!” He said he was going to give them half when they returned our passports (upon boarding our flight to Singapore) and the other half when we landed. He made it clear that if he gave it all to them before we left, we weren’t going anywhere! He then told us that he in fact did have the proper visas for us, but they were revoked the week before the show by the same immigration office and was told that we would be ok with just regular tourist visas, due to the fact that their elections were going on that week. When Surabaya called and told them (immigration) that we where commanding large crowds, they purposely didn’t cancel the show and let us play right into their extortion trap!
They could have cancelled the show at any point and chose not to. We obviously made it out, though the trauma still lingers. There are several details that I have chosen to leave out for the sake of time. You could make a movie out of this shit! I just wanted to warn all touring bands, STAY CLEAR OF INDONESIA, and any other country which doesn’t have a good relationship with the USA!
It happened to us and can happen again…
Gus Rios – 2009
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