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Despite holding a valid Indonesian visa, Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven was turned back by immigration officials at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Thursday afternoon.

Sauven arrived on a Singapore Airlines flight at 4:05 p.m., and was halted by staff at immigration, who ordered him to leave.

Nur Hidayati, Greenpeace’s country representative for Indonesia, said Sauven had just been granted a visa.

According to an immigration official who spoke to the Jakarta Globe on condition of anonymity, Sauven’s name was “red listed” on the airport immigration service’s computers as banned from entry into Indonesia.

“Our staff only know that his name came up on our banned list. We’re just field staff, so we stop people as the ban requires,” the source said.

“Sauven was not deported, but halted before entering, because he had not yet crossed the yellow line. He was directly returned to his country of origin.”

Sauven was to take part in discussions on deforestation and meet with business representatives, including executives from palm oil giant Golden Agri Resources, and the British ambassador to Indonesia.

Johnson Panjaitan, a lawyer for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said he was dumbfounded by the decision.

“We granted him a visa, for which he had met the conditions and paid,” Johnson said. “A civilized country should honor its own decisions,” he said, while waiting for Sauven at the airport.

Johnson said there had not been any official notice given of the ban.

“These are the symptoms of the authoritarian Suharto era, when, for mysterious reasons, well-meaning people were stopped from arriving or leaving. We will become known as bad hosts.”

Greenpeace will take the ban up with the immigration department, Johnson said.

“We are going to contest this, as an international organization, both in the UK and in Indonesia,” he said, adding that the country was bowing to investors.

It was beginning to look as if Greenpeace had been “blacklisted” by Indonesia, even in the absence of a court decision to such effect.

“John has not got a bad track record here, in fact he even got married in Bali. He arrived today to join in a discussion and learn about Indonesia,” Johnson said.

The ban comes amid criticism of the environment group’s activities by legislators and religious leaders, who have claimed the organization is doing the bidding of foreign interests.

Greenpeace’s local office said it had signed up thousands of Indonesian supporters, all of whom donate to the group and some of whom take part in the non-violent direct actions for which the group has developed a worldwide reputation.

The staff of the Jakarta office have been the target of angry protests and physical intimidation from hard-line activist groups.

The groups include the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Betawi Brotherhood Forum (FBR), who many suspect were paid to demonstrate by the companies for whom the environmental activists work has been a threat.

In October last year, the government refused to allow the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior II to dock in Jakarta, citing a lack of clarity over its planned activities.