The Indonesian government should strengthen its refugee acceptance policy and provide sufficient protection of refugee’s fundamental rights as a part of its commitment to humanity.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) monthly Statistical Report on Indonesia published in December 2020, Indonesia is a host for 13,743 refugees and asylum seekers. Myanmar accounts for the third-largest number of refugees in Indonesia, just below Somalia and Afghanistan. Many Myanmar refugees in Indonesia belong to the Rohingya ethnic group, one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

SUAKA Indonesia documented in a study titled Barely Living three major influxes of Rohingya refugees to Indonesia in 2009, 2012 and 2015. The biggest exodus happened in 2015, involving about 1,500 people, comprising Rohingya and Bangladeshi refugees. They were saved by fishermen in Aceh after floating at sea for days.

This incident is now remembered as the Bay of Bengal Crisis or Andaman Sea Crisis. One year after the human tragedy, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo enacted Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No. 125/2016 on the handling of foreign refugees.

In 2020, nearly 400 Rohingya refugees who fled persecution in Myanmar were stranded in Aceh after a dangerous journey at sea. They arrived in two waves, including many women and children, aboard broken boats and baffling grief due to the loss of lives during their embarkation.

SUAKA recorded the lack of an immediate response and conformity to the Perpres in saving the Rohingya refugees and protecting their fundamental rights. The regulation as the only legal instrument to deal with foreign refugees turns out to regulate technicalities in accepting refugees when they enter Indonesian territory.

It indicates that the regulation was drafted under the influence of a national security perspective, not humanitarian and human rights considerations. As of now, there is no comprehensive regulation on refugee issues in place in the country that adheres to human rights principles.

The political crisis in Myanmar may trigger an exodus of people who wish to escape from persecution and conflicts there despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Based on past experiences, Indonesia will be one of the destination countries due to its geographical proximity.

After they settle in Indonesia, voluntary repatriation of the Rohingya refugees looks unlikely, given the fact that Myanmar’s commander-in-chief, Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who led the Feb. 1 coup, was directly involved in “clearance operations” against Rohingya Muslims in 2017. Indonesia should therefore prepare for the worst-case scenario.  

The Perpres will enter five years of implementation this year. The time has come for the government to evaluate the implementation of the regulation and analyze whether it sufficiently protects fundamental rights of refugees in the country. For that purpose, the government should replace the security approach of the regulation with inclusivity and human rights perspectives.

In evaluating the regulation, the government should involve civil society groups, refugee communities and relevant international organizations.

In the long run, Indonesia needs to establish a long-term strategy to strengthen its national refugee protection policy. The commitment to refugee protection should not be measured by humanitarian and charitable action but by the creation and enforcement of comprehensive rights-based policies. The normative rights protection should be enacted in the form of a law rather than a Perpres, as the latter is not the right instrument to regulate normative rights protection.

The Foreign Ministry should also contribute to eliminating the root cause of the conflict in

Myanmar by forging external pressure on the Myanmar government to end discrimination against the Rohingya and restore the country’s path to democracy.

Through the two-pronged approach of domestic and international measures, Indonesia can implement the mandate of the preamble of the 1945 Constitution, which stipulates that the government of Indonesia shall contribute to the establishment of a world order based on freedom.

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The writer is legal empowerment coordinator of SUAKA Indonesia.