Indonesia has recently been accused of arms-dealing to Myanmar, formerly Burma, through middlemen, which, if true, would go against a 2019-treaty to abstain from selling weapons to the coup-controlled country. Indonesia is among the few nations to have taken a principled stance on the current coup crisis.

In a complaint filed Monday, October 2, with the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights, former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman and other rights activist organizations said they had evidence that national Indonesian firms had transferred weapons and ammunition through a Burmese company called True North owned by the son of junta-appointed minister Win Shein, according to the Jakarta Post. The 41-page complaint asked the Commission to investigate suspected arms sales, said the Diplomat. 

The Human Rights group that drew up the complaint includes two Myanmar organizations, the Chin Human Rights Organisation and Myanmar Accountability Project, said Reuters. According to leaked documents obtained by the advocacy group Justice for Myanmar, the alleged sales took place though a company owned by Htoo Htoo Shein Oo, the son of Win Shein, the military government’s planning and finance minister. Win Shein is currently sanctioned by the United States, Canada, and the European Union for his role in the military government, said the Diplomat.

According to Reuters, Indonesian state-owned defense holding company DEFEND ID, whose units include PT Pindad, PT PAL and PT Dirgantara Indonesia, said in a statement that the companies had not exported defense equipment to Myanmar after Feb. 1, 2021, when the coup in Myanmar took place. PT Pindad’s director said the company had exported only sports ammunition products to Myanmar in 2016 for a regional shooting contest, but nothing since then. PT Dirgantara Indonesia said it had never had a contract with Myanmar or a related third party.

“We always follow the Indonesian government’s foreign policy and regulations, including the U.N. resolution to stop violence in Myanmar,” Bobby Rasyidin, chief executive of DEFEND ID, said in a statement, according to Benar News.

Myanmar has been racked by violence since the military overthrew a government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi more than two years ago, said Reuters.

The Diplomat stated that the complaint does not state what material was purchased from the three firms, but cites official company documents from PT Pindad that describe the Myanmar Air Force and Myanmar Navy as among its “valued clients.” It also documents a pattern of interactions between the three companies and Myanmar that predate the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya communities of Rakhine State in 2016-17. Specifically, PT Pindad and PT Dirgantara Indonesia may have transferred arms to Myanmar after the Rohingya campaign. It also claims that “at least one Indonesian company, PT PAL, continued to transfer ammunition after the coup attempt.”

“The role of True North as a private company negotiating deals between the Myanmar military and Indonesia’s state-owned arms companies raises suspicions of potential corruption that should also be investigated by Indonesian authorities,” the complaint stated.

Indonesia, which holds the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has criticized the Myanmar junta repeatedly for its role in post-coup violence, said Benar News. 

Indonesia has been part of ASEAN’s five-point regional consensus, a blueprint for peace in Myanmar that the regional bloc adopted shortly after the coup. It called for an immediate end to violence, dialogue among all parties, a special envoy to mediate, humanitarian assistance and a visit by the envoy to Myanmar. However, the junta has so far not implemented any of these steps.

The South China Morning Post said that though Indonesia’s defense sector has denied allegations, observers say workarounds, such as the use of offshore intermediaries, could have enabled such military sales to continue – potentially hurting Indonesia’s reputation as a peace broker and defender of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslims if found to be true. It could hurt Indonesia’s reputation as a peace broker, as well as its credibility with Burmese people, and Indonesian Minister of Defence Prabowo Subianto’s electoral prospects.

Myanmar’s military seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, following a general election that it claimed was fraudulent. The coup caused widespread protests from the civilian population and armed resistance from ethnic armed groups and militias.

The military responded with a brute force, killing more than 4,100 people and arresting more than 25,000 others. The United Nations has warned that Myanmar is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, noting that millions of people are in need of aid and protection.

In August 2019, while he then served as chairman of the U.N. fact-finding mission on Myanmar, Marzuki and his team called for an arms sales embargo against the Burmese capital Naypyidaw. Many foreign companies, some state-owned companies in China, had been supplying weapons and equipment used by the Myanmar military against ethnic minorities, the team reported that month.

According to Benar News while announcing the complaint, Marzuki stated: “The fact that defense equipment has been actively promoted after the genocidal campaign against the Rohingya and the 2021 coup is cause for serious concern and casts doubt on the Indonesian government’s willingness to comply with its obligations under international human rights law and humanitarian law.” 

On October 3, analyst Khairul Fahmi at the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies commented on the activists’ complaint.

“If the report about the weapons sales were true, the government could be seen as negligent,” Khairul Fahmi said. 

He noted that talks regarding arms sales to Myanmar had started before violence by the military, beginning in August 2017, forced over 740,000 Muslim-minority Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.

According to Reuters, several countries have already been accused of enabling the junta despite heavy sanctions from the international community. The UN special rapporteur on Myanmar reported in May that Myanmar’s military had imported at least $1 billion worth of arms and related material since the coup, largely from Russia, China, Singapore, Thailand and India. Fellow ASEAN neighbor Singapore has faced a similar controversy, after a local court did not adequately punish local arms dealers who admitted to circumventing national laws to sell military hardware to Myanmar.

Journalists at the Jakarta Post wrote, “It would severely undermine Indonesia’s foreign policy principle of respecting the rule of law, a position that the country’s national security officials and foreign service have been trained to consistently espouse in diplomatic negotiations and international treaties.”