Leonardo DiCaprio Could Be Banned from Entering Indonesia

Leonardo DiCaprio could be banned from entering Indonesia in the future over his comments on rainforests being cleared for palm oil plantations.

The 41-year-old actor entered Indonesia on a tourist visa and on March 27 visited Gunung Leuser National Park in Aceh.

Leonardo DiCaprio posted following his visit to the park: “A world-class biodiversity hotspot… but palm oil expansion is destroying this unique place.”

Now Heru Santoso, a spokesperson for the director general of the immigration department, has revealed Leonardo DiCaprio could be banned for such comments – if they’re “categorized as incitement or provocation”.

”In terms of [his] visa and immigration permit, Leonardo DiCaprio did not do anything wrong: He entered and left Indonesia legally. But, we still investigate,” Heru Santoso told BBC News.

“If DiCaprio’s posting in his social media can be categorized as incitement or provocation, we can blacklist him from coming back to Indonesia.”

It is not the first time a Hollywood star has run into trouble in Indonesia over their environmental activism.

Harrison Ford was threatened with deportation in 2013 for “harassing state institutions” after interviewing the then forestry minister about illegal logging.

In posts on his Instagram account, Leonardo DiCaprio said he was working to save the Leuser ecosystem, “the last place on Earth where Sumatran orangutans, tigers, rhinos and elephants coexist in the wild”.

On Twitter, Leonardo DiCaprio posted a link to a petition addressed to the Indonesian President Joko Widodo, calling for the area to be protected.

Some members of the government have accused Leonardo DiCaprio of running a “black campaign” to discredit the government and Indonesia’s palm oil industry.

Earlier this year environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio used his Oscars speech to warn the world about climate change.

Accepting the Best Actor award, Leonardo DiCaprio explained: “Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world.

“A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow.

“Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species.

“We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this.”