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Myanmar President Thein Sein has asked Indonesia to help his government in resolving ongoing ethnic tensions in the country’s western Rakhine state, where more than 110,000 people, the vast majority of them Muslims known as Rohingya, have been displaced.

“Myanmar invited us to help them [in resolving the Rohingya problem], with the President [Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono] indicating his willingness to help in due time,” presidential spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said after a meeting between Thein Sein and Yudhoyono on the sidelines of the 21st ASEAN Summit and Related Summits in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.

Yudhoyono underlined that the problem had to be well resolved since it had attracted international attention, noting that the issue was a communal conflict, not a religious clash as portrayed to the general public.

Therefore, Indonesia together with Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia have tried to portray the issue proportionally.

“We must give them a kind of support or understanding in a sense that this is not related to religion,” Faizasyah said.

Besides efforts to end the conflict, Thein Sein said that Myanmar’s government had launched various programs to alleviate suffering and for community building and reconstruction measures involving a huge amount of money.

The social problems in Rakhine were indeed very complex, and included education, Thein Sein added.

“Therefore, Myanmar hopes that Indonesia can invest in the Rakhine State to create more jobs. There are complex problems there,” he said.

Thein Sein, who has orchestrated much of his country’s transition to democracy, has opened the door to any party who wants to visit, investigate and observe the situation.

Thein Sein has blamed nationalist and religious extremists for the unrest in June and October that killed at least 167 people, but has faced criticism for failing to address underlying tensions in the Rakhine state, where an estimated 800,000 Rohingya Muslims are not recognized as citizens.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan warned that the problem should be handled effectively. “Eight hundred thousand people are now under tremendous pressure. If that issue is not handled well and effectively, there is a risk of radicalization. There is a risk of extremism,” he said in Phnom Penh.

The United Nations said on Friday that Thein Sein had sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promising action to tackle the problems.

In a statement, Ban’s office said Thein Sein had promised that “once emotions subside on all sides”, his government was prepared to “address contentious political dimensions, ranging from resettlement of displaced populations to granting of citizenship”.

Aside from the Rohingya, during the meeting, Yudhoyono also highlighted the recent developments in Myanmar, saying that its transformation process was on the right track.

Indonesia consistently supported Myanmar when the country, which was previously known as Burma, started its reform process. Myanmar also appreciated Indonesia’s support all this time, including during the process when they were having difficulties.



JAKARTA: The Indonesian Red Cross sent a team of aid workers on Saturday to western Myanmar, where deadly sectarian violence in June left dozens dead and thousands of mostly Muslim Rohingya displaced.

The eight-member team took off in a military jet from an airbase in the capital Jakarta in the morning with 500 hygiene kits, 3,000 blankets and 10,000 sarongs for the first phase of their mission.

"This is an agreement between the president of Myanmar and the Indonesian Red Cross," Indonesian Red Cross chief Jusuf Kalla told reporters.

"We expect the team to stay for around a year, but that will depend on coordination with the government and other Red Cross and Red Crescent teams."

Sectarian violence between Buddhists and Rohingya has flared in Rakhine state, where clashes in June left around 80 people dead, according to official estimates deemed low by rights groups.

Villages were razed and an estimated 70,000 people, the majority of them Rohingya, were left displaced in government-run camps and shelters.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has accused Myanmar forces of opening fire on Rohingya, as well as committing rape and standing by as rival mobs attacked each other.

Myanmar has set up a commission to probe the clashes after facing heavy criticism from rights groups.

Decades of discrimination have left the Rohingya stateless and they are viewed by the United Nations as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.

Source : AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2012
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and  former vice president Jusuf Kalla  
Aug 22, 2012 

Indonesia has appointed former vice president Jusuf Kalla as a special envoy to help address sectarian violence in Burma's Rakhine state.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the move was a form of "solidarity with our Rohingya brothers".

Mr Kalla, who is chairman of the Indonesian Red Cross, is expected to arrive in Burma on September 8.

"It started as a personal conflict, and going to a political conflict, and then going to an ethnic conflict and it will be a religious conflict," Mr Kalla told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program.

"As an humanitarian, Asian, Muslim country, it should be our duty to assist and to participate to support the government there in stopping this violence."

Burma recently allowed the Indonesian Red Cross, along with other international humanitarian agencies, to send aid to refugees forced to flee the deadly conflicts between Rohingyas and Rakhines that have left at least 87 dead.

Source : Abc Australia


Indonesia Pushes OIC to Move on Conflicts in Myanmar, Syria
Ismira Lutfia | August 14, 2012




Indonesia has urged the Organization of the Islamic Conference to take action to help stop bloody conflicts in Myanmar and Syria, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said, as the international organization prepared for an emergency summit on Tuesday. 

The OIC has scheduled an emergency summit to implement recommendations formed after OIC foreign ministers met on Monday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to discuss issues facing the world's Muslim community.

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said on Tuesday that Indonesia had urged the ministers to devise a concrete strategy to stop the violence and killings in Myanmar and Syria.

“Just condemning various problems faced by Muslims is not a policy,” he said. “The OIC should take concrete and constructive steps to overcome the various problems of the ummat [Islamic community].”

In Myanmar, he said, the OIC should act to help stop the killings of the Rohingya Muslim minority, who have been targeted by violence in the state of Rakhine. Human Rights Watch has accused Myanmar security forces of opening fire on Rohingyas, committing rape and standing by as mobs attacked each other.

“As a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural country, just as Myanmar is, Indonesia understands and has experience overcoming horizontal conflicts that are not easy to solve,” Marty said.

Indonesia has also urged the OIC to stand together to help end the violent conflict in Syria, he said.

“The OIC has to come out with a unified message so the UN Security Council can immediately act to stop the violence in Syria, if necessary using chapter seven of the UN charter,” he said, referring to a chapter governing action against threats to peace, breaches of peace and acts of aggression.

He said Indonesia proposed that the OIC send peacekeepers to Syria if the United Nations needed extra support, and added that the main aim should be to stop the violence and killings there.


Source here 


RI ready to fight for Rohingya
Margareth S. Aritonang and Bagus BT Saragih, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Marty Natalegawa and Aung San Suu Kyi 
In his first official statement regarding the prolonged communal violence in western Myanmar between Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said that Indonesia would raise the problem at the Extraordinary Summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, scheduled for mid-August.

Marty said that Indonesia would emphasize its opposition to any kind of human rights violations, including the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

“We must highlight, again, that Indonesia has consistently rejected discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, or any other reason. Our stance also applies to the ongoing attacks against the Rohingya in Myanmar,” Marty told reporters at his office.

Marty also insisted that Indonesia would not sit idly by while western Myanmar burns.

He said that Indonesia had sent an envoy to Bangladesh and Myanmar in 2010 to investigate the conflict between the Rohingya and the Rakhine after refugees from the conflict poured in into the country.

“We have always brought the issue into multilateral and bilateral discussions with Myanmar. So it’s not true that we don’t care. Our silence doesn’t mean we don’t care,” Marty said.

Data from the Foreign Ministry said that 394 Rohingya have sought refugee status in Indonesia, 124 of whom were ready to be resettled in third party countries. The remaining 199 displaced persons are sheltered in a number of refugee camps in the country.

“We always open our door for anyone who needs our help,” Marty said.

Separately, presidential spokesman Julian Aldrin Pasha said that the Indonesian government would not comment on granting political asylum status to the Rohingya who had arrived in the country. 

“I have no statement with regard to that,” Julian said at the Presidential Office on Monday.

Hundreds of the ethnic Muslim have fled Myanmar for several nearby states, including Indonesia. 

The United Nations claims there are about 800,000 Rohingya in Myanmar, and considers them among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

At least 78 people have been killed in communal violence there in the last month.

Reports say the Rohingya are currently stranded in the Riau Islands, with some in other locations around West and East Java. They left Myanmar to seek safety and asylum from the Indonesian government, with some apparently hoping to continue on to Australia for the same purpose. They are reportedly surviving in poor conditions, lacking food and other basic necessities.

When asked what the government would do about the situation, Julian said the administration had taken all possible measures, but for the time being, Indonesia could only use diplomacy. “The government has been trying its best in our diplomatic efforts with Myanmar. Hopefully these efforts will stop the violence,” he said.

“Our position is clear: we will make any possible diplomatic efforts to help our Rohingya brothers,” Julian added. 

Myanmar, meanwhile, has denied the communal conflict was motivated by religion and rejected any effort to bring an international presence into the conflict.

“Peace and stability is indispensable for the on-going democratization and reform process in Myanmar. National solidarity and racial harmony among different nationalities is vital for the perpetuation of the Union. Myanmar is a multi-religious country where Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Hindus have been living together in peace and harmony for centuries, hence recent incidents in Rakhine State are neither because of religious oppression nor discrimination,” Myanmar’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

Source here

    • Rohingya Exodus