Bringing Keris with you to Indonesia and back

[David]

Originally Posted by ariel

In any authoritarian society the severity of laws is mitigated by their selective obedience.
In Russia, for example, this rule is formulated as:” The law is like a telegraph pole: you cannot jump over it, but you can just go around “.

I am not sure that i would equate a nation's attempt to keep its cultural history from being sold out from under them to by banning export of one of their most important cultural artifacts a form of "authoritarianism". I think it is more a matter of cultural preservation.