 Visitors to his succession of small offices in the early '90s remember calling on him to find themselves welcomed by Princen resting in his underwear, and his close friends recall that it was seldom that they were able to leave before parting with a contribution to help pay his driver or his phone bill.Still, the same obituary also notes that, however widely respected Princen was, "toward the end of his career, much of his work was taken over by younger Indonesians, some of whom felt it inappropriate that the human rights struggle should be led by a man who was still, in their eyes, a foreigner".As under Sukarno, Princen was under Suharto jailed several times – mainly on charges of organizing illegal political protests.