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Indonesia and the Rohingya Crisis
IPAC Report No.46 – 29 June 2018
Indonesia has performed a delicate balancing act with respect to Myanmar and the Rohingya refugee crisis. Led by the Foreign Ministry, the government of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has tried to demonstrate concern for the Rohingya without alienating a fellow member of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It has tried to pre-empt domestic calls for harsher measures against Myanmar by embracing some Islamist groups within a moderate government-sanctioned humanitarian coalition. It has tried to engage Myanmar on other issues, including counter-terrorism, to ensure that channels to the government were kept open even as relations with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi deteriorated in late 2017. By mid-2018, Indonesia’s Rohingya policy was focused primarily on getting aid to the camps around Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. But its newly secured position on the United Nations Security Council opened the possibility that it could work for a resolution of Rohingya refugee crisis and conflict in Rakhine State more generally. If it is to have any chance of success, however, all ministries and government agencies will have to take the same line.
Indonesia’s relations with Myanmar are driven by its commitment to (ASEAN); its belief – especially during the government of Thein Sein – that its own democratic transition offered models for Myanmar; its desire to be a peace broker; its efforts to ensure access for humanitarian aid; and its need to respond to domestic pressure to defend fellow Muslims under attack.
The Jokowi government’s response to the 2017 violence against ethnic Rohingya and resulting refugee outflow began with highly visible diplomacy on the part of Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi. As it became clear that Myanmar (and Aung San Suu Kyi in particular) did not welcome an activist Indonesian role, the Foreign Ministry focused on the provision of humanitarian assistance in partnership with a civil society coalition. The partnership, led by Indonesia’s two largest Muslim organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, serves two main purposes. It keeps the government engaged on the Rohingya issue when it has little leverage to affect Myanmar’s policies in Rakhine state, and it provides an outlet for Indonesian NGOs to put their anger at the violence against fellow Muslims to constructive use. It also appears to be a reasonably effective response to Islamist critics of President Jokowi, who at the height of the crisis in September 2017 were calling on his administration to do more.
Indonesian sympathy for the Rohingya does not thus far extend to a willingness to accept large numbers of those in Bangladesh for resettlement, despite the fact that public support could probably have been mobilised had the government been committed to such a gesture. While it has been reasonably hospitable to those who have landed accidentally in Aceh, usually en route to Malaysia, it is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention and has one of the lowest refugee populations in the region. This is largely because asylum-seekers, refugees and economic migrants who reach its shores are generally seeking to go to either Malaysia or Australia; Indonesia is not a destination of choice. With the Rohingya, some Indonesian officials are also wary of possible contact between Indonesian extremist groups and militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), though there has been no evidence thus far that ARSA has any interest. That said, some Islamist groups operating outside the government-sanctioned coalition are going on their own to the refugee camps in Bangladesh, and if there are routes and contacts set up, it may be a matter of time before more systematic communication between Indonesian extremists and ARSA – or more radical Rohingya networks in the camps – is established.
In mid-2012, widespread violence between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya erupted in Rakhine state, sparked by the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by Muslim men. The sectarian violence resulted in dozens of fatalities and more than 120,000 people (mostly Rohingyas) displaced by the end of the year. For the first time, violence in Myanmar generated serious domestic political pressure on an Indonesian government and the Yudhoyono administration was forced to respond. President Yudhoyono saw the crisis as giving Indonesia a chance to play a leadership role in various multilateral fora. On 4 August 2012, he wrote to Myanmar President Thein Sein urging Myanmar to uphold human rights, ensure transparency of information and allow international delegations to monitor the situation on the ground.
By the time the next wave of Rohingya and Bangladeshi boat people arrived, Indonesia had a new president, Jokowi and a new foreign minister, Retno Marsudi. This time, approximately five boats carrying 1,800 Rohingyas and Bengalis, seen as victims of human trafficking and what Human Rights Watch called a “dangerous game of human ping-pong”, arrived in Aceh between 10 and 20 May 2015. An attack by ARSA against 30 police posts and an army base on 25 August 2017 and the killings, rapes and burnings of entire villages by the Myanmar military and armed Buddhist vigilantes that followed produced one of the fastest and largest refugee exoduses in modern times. More than 700,000 Rohingyas were driven out of northern Rakhine into Bangladesh in a matter of weeks.
All things considered; the Jokowi government managed to handle the Rohingya issue effectively as far as the domestic opposition is concerned. It went out of its way to work with civil society to provide humanitarian assistance without either seriously jeopardising its relations with the Myanmar government – despite Aung San Suu Kyi’s irritation with even the mildest expressions of concern over the violence – or taking any genuinely bold measures like accepting significant numbers of Rohingya refugees and encouraging other ASEAN members to do the same. The only hope may lie in Indonesia’s new position as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council Member for 2019-2020. With sustained attention from Jakarta, this might offer a chance to push for resolution of the Rohingya humanitarian problem along the lines of “4+1 Formula”. During an earlier round membership in the UNSC, Indonesia helped create the “Group of Friends of the Secretary-General on Myanmar” that in 2008 helped push for greater humanitarian access in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. Finding a way forward on the Rohingya crisis will be much harder, but there are not many other options.
