THE international arms trade isn’t exactly known for its moral consistency, but sometimes it throws up paradoxes that would be comic if they weren’t so tragic.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, stands accused by lawyers and human rights activists of selling arms to Myanmar that were used to kill at least 25,000 mostly Muslim Rohingya people between 2016 and 2017 (although the oppression of this group and many others is ongoing).

The genocide is one of the most egregious instances of Islamophobia in recent history and prompted all 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation to launch a case against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice in 2019.

But for three Indonesian state-run arms companies — PT PAL, PT Pindad and PT Dirgantara — turning a tidy profit has been a higher priority than religious or cultural solidarity, let alone simple humanity.

Sponsored by human rights advocates including Marzuki Darusman, ex-attorney general of Indonesia and the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP), whose executive director is former UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Chris Gunness, the current complaint lodged last October with the Indonesian Human Rights Commission alleges that Jakarta supplied the Myanmar dictatorship with assault rifles, handguns, military vehicles and other kit that enabled the annihilation and displacement of Rohingyas in their native Rakhine State in the west of the country.

In two stages, firstly from October 2016 to January 2017 and secondly ever since August 2017, soldiers supported by Buddhist extremist paramilitaries have committed torture, mass rape and summary executions.

When the antagonists burned villages to the ground, they threw children into the fires — and made their parents watch for good measure.

Attempts were made to justify these atrocities with odious stereotypes about Rohingyas “over-breeding,” conspiring to “Islamise” Myanmar and being culturally more “Bengali” than Myanmarese given their geographical proximity to Bangladesh (to where, incidentally, 700,000 have been forced to flee since the genocide began).

The victimisation dates back to at least the early 1960s when the military autocracy of Ne Win promoted nationalist and religious (88 per cent of Myanmarese are Buddhist, just 4 per cent Muslim) chauvinism to divert attention from economic crisis and inequality.

Defend ID, the Indonesian state-owned defence holdings company, hotly denied vending weapons to Myanmar, especially after the globally condemned 2021 military coup, which triggered a new wave of state violence including the murder of 4,100, the detention of 25,000 and a sharp increase in the number of Rohingya refugees by 300,000.

Almost three years on, General Min Aung Hlaing remains the unelected leader of Myanmar, the persecution of minorities and political opponents continues, and 40 per cent of the populace is living below the poverty line.

The issue of dubious arms exports has not come up in Indonesia’s boisterous, ongoing election campaign. But, just as the US has come under fire for selling $1 billion worth of raw materials intended for military equipment manufacture to Yangon, and Britain has been criticised for approving arms export licences worth £10 million between 2012 and 2022, the evidence provided by MAP and others to the Human Rights Commission is embarrassing for Jakarta.

The dossier shows that more or less continuously since 2014 Indonesia and Myanmar have agreed on arms transactions, established “bilateral collaborations” between their respective defence industries and worked together on product “showcases and promotions.”

In its 2018 annual report, PT Pindad stated it was “conducting project management office activities for several countries” including Myanmar, specifically with regard to the G2 Elite pistols and SS2-V4 assault rifles it manufactures.

A May 2023 report by Thomas Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on Myanmar, also found that India, China, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia had either sold military equipment or the raw materials required to make arms to Myanmar during these recent dark days.

And just to show how little gets in the way of good business, Bangladesh, the Muslim-majority nation that has given safe refuge to hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, was named in the report as hosting bank accounts for the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank, one of the main instruments used by the dictatorship to repatriate foreign revenue …  which funds the oppressive state machinery …  which contributes to the displacement of Muslim Rohingyas to places like Bangladesh.