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thnic and religious segregation in Myanmar is one of the reasons why its government has blocked most international humanitarian assistance, an Indonesian envoy told students in a discussion on Tuesday.

Indonesian envoy to Myanmar Iza Fadri said the Myanmar government was very selective in approving direct humanitarian assistance for the ethnic Rohingya following a military crackdown in 2017 that drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine state into neighboring Bangladesh.

Before the crackdown, it was estimated that there were 1 million Rohingya people living in Myanmar, mostly Muslims but some Hindus. The group was defined as one of the most persecuted minorities by the United Nations by 2013, as the Indo-Aryan ethnic group has been denied citizenship under a 1982 Myanmar nationality law for not being one of the eight “national indigenous races”: Bamar, Chin, Kachin, Kayin, Kayah, Mon, Rakhine and Shan, each of which has its own ethnic groups for a total of 135 ethnic groups.

“Other communities in Rakhine state will say that the ethnic Rohingya was not the only community that is poor. So the assistance should go to the government, which will distribute it under their discretion,” Iza told a seminar at the Miriam Budiarjo Resource Center at the University of Indonesia, Depok.

Iza, an active two-star police general, said Indonesia managed to build a hospital, set to be operational in March, in Rakhine through the Indonesian Red Cross, the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee and various other groups.

Other countries that are willing to do the same did not even get a response from the Myanmar government due to concerns that any form of friction among different ethnic groups would cause “a problem” within society, the envoy said.

“The issue is so sensitive that the government also asked us to divide the hospital into two sections, for Islam and non-Islam communities, because apparently sick people will still fight with each other,” he said.

However, Iza said the Indonesian people must understand the perspective of a country that had its own complicated historical, political and sociocultural background.

The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s powerful military, held a significant role protected under the constitution, with control in all three government branches, he said.

In a visit to Myanmar last year, he said, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto raised the refugee crisis in Rakhine state when he was received by Tatmadaw Commander in Chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

Iza said at that time the two generals discussed nationality and statehood but when the refugee issue was raised, it was met with a cold shoulder.

“When Wiranto said that the Rohingya should be discussed in ASEAN, the military commander said they already had a lot of conflicts domestically […] and would prefer to settle it bilaterally with Bangladesh,” he said, adding that, now, his correspondence with the government was only through Myanmar’s foreign ministry.

Nevertheless, Myanmar has its doors open at the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance Center, which is working to find solutions to the repatriation of the Rohingya from Bangladesh to Myanmar. The center is scheduled to start surveying the Rakhine region in 2019.