Indonesia’s efforts to make the peace in post-coup Myanmar aren’t just about showing Southeast Asian solidarity, they are a way of showcasing Jakarta’s democratic credentials to the new administration in the United States, experts say.

The coup by the Myanmar military against the democratically elected National League for Democracy party led by Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1 is just the latest in a string of issues to have threatened unity in the 10 member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) bloc.

The bloc has also found itself in the middle of a multi-country power struggle, with China, the US, India and Japan all vying for influence in the region, said Dr Greta Nabbs-Keller, a research fellow for Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific at the University of Queensland’s Centre for Policy Futures in Australia.

“By asserting leadership and agency, Jakarta is attempting to keep Naypyidaw firmly in the Asean camp to avoid the country sliding further under Beijing’s influence,” Nabbs-Keller said.

“Indonesia’s desire to settle the dispute within Asean, with reference to democratic principles and good governance enshrined in the Asean Charter, meanwhile, is genuinely expressed but also a way to burnish its democratic credentials with the Biden administration.” Analysts said that Indonesia understood that US President Joe Biden was putting alliances at the forefront of Washington’s foreign policies and that this stance had been underlined by the return of Kurt Campbell, the architect of former US President Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’.

“Kurt Campbell represents a familiar and steady hand in Indonesia-US relations. His appointment was a welcome development in Indonesia’s diplomatic circles,” Nabbs-Keller said.

The veteran diplomat, who was also the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013, is now the Indo-Pacific coordinator on the National Security Council. With up to 20 members, Campbell’s team occupies the largest regional NSC directorate, highlighting Biden’s focus on engaging Asian allies to contain China’s rising assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.

“I think Indonesia understands that with the Joe Biden administration there will be more of an expectation that Asean plays a leading role in the region and Indonesia plays a leading role within Asean,” said Aaron Connelly, a research fellow on Southeast Asian politics at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

“You’re beginning to see Indonesia step up to reflect that, partly because it wanted to demonstrate to the Biden administration that Asean is an organisation worth engaging and perhaps if Asean can do something useful on Myanmar, then the US will also listen to Asean more when it comes to US-China relations and issues that are of strategic importance to Asean.”

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi has been engaging in shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks, visiting the current Asean chair Brunei as well as Singapore and Thailand to seek their support for a meeting of Asean foreign ministers. She has also met Myanmar’s junta-appointed foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, and conveyed Indonesia’s concerns about the developments in Myanmar and emphasised the need for all Asean member states to adhere to the Asean Charter.

Retno has also talked to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and her counterparts in India, Japan, Australia, the European Union, and Britain, among others.

“Indonesia hopes for support from both the US and China on Myanmar issues and it hopes that the issues will not be used to sharpen the rivalries between the US and China,” said Dewi Fortuna Anwar, foreign policy expert with Jakarta-based Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

Strategic interests

For Indonesia, support from China and the US are needed not only to solve the turmoil in Myanmar, but also for its own strategic interests. Indonesia has enjoyed more than 70 years of bilateral relationships with both major powers, made possible by its bebas aktif (‘free and active’), foreign policy, in which the world’s third largest democracy aims to befriend all nations while also playing an active role in maintaining world peace, security, and stability.

For Indonesia, boosting ties with Washington remained significant as US foreign policy would “affect Indonesia, directly or indirectly”, said Thomas Noto Suoneto, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia.

“We see the movement of the Quad in the region, we see the movement of the US in the South China Sea issue. So the peace and stability in the region is affected and influenced by the US,” he said.

The Quad, made up of the US, India, Australia and Japan, is a group of major democracies that have been strengthening security ties as a counter to China’s increasing influence in the region.

“It’s also about economics,” continued Suoneto. “We see how [tensions and the] trade war between the US and China have reshaped the economic direction of the countries in the region including Indonesia, so basically there are consequences for Indonesia if the US is not on board in fulfilling Indonesia’s strategic interests.”

Connelly said Indonesia could boost ties with the US if it remained active in preserving regional stability, something that Indonesia had done in recent weeks by rallying fellow Asean members to help resolve Myanmar’s issues.

“If we see Indonesia continue the type of diplomacy that we’ve seen over the last two weeks, where it is really emphasising the ‘active’ part of ‘free and active’ foreign policy, I expect the US would begin to pay a lot more attention to Indonesia’s foreign policy and begin to be much more solicitous of Indonesian interests and concerns than it has been over the last seven years,” Connelly said.

Indonesia, however, sees the importance of diversifying its strategic partners beyond the US. It has in recent years forged partnerships with countries such as South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto has travelled to at least eight countries, including Turkey, China, Japan, Russia, and France, to strengthen the country’s list of defence partners.

Prabowo also visited the US in October 2020 to meet his then-counterpart Mark Esper, marking the end of two decades in which the former special forces general had been denied a visa due to claims he was involved in rights abuses during the reign of the dictator Suharto.

Prabowo’s move “should be imitated by other Indonesian ministries”, Suoneto said. “For the past few decades Indonesia really thought that without the US it could not have improvement in some sectors, whether that was economics, technology, or, most crucially, defence, but actually it has so many potential partners that it can work with,” said Suoneto. He added that Indonesia had a stronger economic relationship with China than the US.

Suoneto said Biden should try to improve his personal relationship with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, whose relationship with Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump was described by analysts as “transactional”.

Areas of cooperation

The Widodo administration probably wanted to improve cooperation with the US in four areas: infrastructure development, trade, development of human capital, and health care, Suoneto said.

Meanwhile, according to Nabbs-Keller, the US was probably most interested in defence, democracy, and economic cooperation.

On infrastructure and trade with Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, Beijing has the upper hand on Washington. China was the second largest foreign investor in Indonesia last year with a total realised investment of US$4.8 billion. The US ranked eighth with US$749.9 million.

The US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen this week called Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani. Yellen expressed Washington’s intention to expand ties with Indonesia, help with its economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and work together on addressing climate change, Reuters reported.

Washington’s extension last year of Indonesia’s access to a preferential tariff agreement, set under the Generalised System of Preferences programme, was “recognition of Indonesia’s strategic importance but the US knows it needs to do much more in Southeast Asia to compete with China’s expansive trade and infrastructure engagement,” Nabbs-Keller said.

However, the US has a more advanced defence relationship with Indonesia. Government-to-government sales of defence equipment have hit US$1.88 billion, with aircraft, firearms and electronics among the most commonly traded items, according to the US Department of State.

Last year, Indonesia received US$14 million in military financing and more than US$2.3 million in military education and training funds from the US. “The bilateral defence relationship is a critical pillar of Indonesia-US relations and an area where China simply cannot compete with Washington for influence,” Nabbs-Keller said.

Defiant anti-junta protests in Yangon and cities across Myanmar were suppressed by military gunfire that killed five protesters Tuesday, as grieving families buried their dead from violence in Yangon, and China issued a warning to protect Chinese businesses after dozens were vandalized, looted, and burned in Yangon in previous days.

The five slain protesters raised to 181 the death toll RFA has recorded as of Tuesday, including four additional fatalities from Monday, in the six weeks of protests since the Feb. 1 military coup that deposed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Tuesday saw emotive scenes as bereaved families held funerals of people killed by security forces, including Khat Nyar Hein, a first-year medical student and member of the country’s ethnic Chinese community who was shot dead by the police in Yangon on Sunday, the deadliest day since the coup.

“Today I lost my son. He was a good son. My heart aches. My heart is full of pain,” said the young man’s mother, speaking in Mandarin.

Security forces shot 17-year-old Khant Nyar Hein in the head on Sunday during anti-coup protests in Yangon’s Tamwe township. Citizen video shows police approaching his body, beating up and arresting a young woman who was trying to help him, then later dragging his body away.

His mother pleaded in a video posted on social media for Myanmar’s people to differentiate between ethnic Chinese citizens of the Southeast Asian country, who are among the millions of Myanmar people who oppose the coup, and the People’s Republic of China in Beijing.

‘I don’t love your government’

China has protected the junta from international diplomatic pressure at the United Nations, but called for legal action over arson attacks on dozens of Chinese-invested factories in Yangon on Sunday.

“I am authentic Chinese, but I don’t love your government there. Not a single bit,” the slain student’s mother said in comments apparently directed at Beijing.

The father of Khant Nyar Hein also weighed in, saying “I hope [the Chinese government] will have sympathy for ethnic Chinese people in Myanmar and for our democracy movement and overturn this coup government.”

Like the ethnic Chinese in Myanmar, democratic Taiwan has taken great pains since the weekend attacks to inform the local population that it has no connection to China.

Taiwan’s representative office in Myanmar has “suggested Taiwanese businesspeople hang signs in Burmese reading ‘Taiwanese company’ at their factories and to hang our country’s national flag, and explain to local workers and neighbors they are a Taiwanese factory to avoid outsiders getting confused and misjudging,” Reuters news agency reported on Monday from Taipei.

Ethnic Chinese, while not among multiethnic Myanmar’s 135 recognized ethnic groups, make up about three percent of the country’s population of 54 million.

After arson attacks on 32 Chinese-funded factories in several Yangon townships Sunday and Monday, causing what China’s state media was nearly 240 million yuan (U.S. $37 million) in damages, Beijing stepped up pressure on military authorities to quell the protests and to protect Chinese interests in the country.

“The rising anti-China sentiment could strain the relationship between the two countries and put the already besieged Myanmar economy under greater duress,” said an editorial by China’s state-run CGTN.

“If it is proven that Myanmar cannot ensure the safety of foreign investments and personnel, it wouldn't only turn off Chinese investment but all investment from overseas,” it said on Monday.

“Chinese businesses create a large number of employment opportunities and help promote Myanmar’s economic and social development,” the editorial said. “We hope the Myanmar side will take further effective measures to ensure the safety of life and property of Chinese enterprises and personnel.”

Martial law

Myanmar political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that “the situation became worse when the two Chinese factories in Hlaingthaya and Shwepyitha townships were hit” in arson attacks Monday.

“The declaration of martial law is the result of the Chinese Embassy’s call for an effective deterrent action,” he said, echoing the widespread belief that China can influence the junta.

Despite rising risk of death or injury from the increasingly aggressive junta forces, defiant anti-junta protests carried on in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay, Magway, Monywa, and Loikaw and in other parts of the country, which is the size of France.

Security forces killed two protesters in Kawlin in the northwestern region of Sagaing as more than 3,000 demonstrators rallied at the township administrator’s residence, witnesses said.

One of the people killed was a man in his 40s who was hit when police dispersed crowds in front of the residence, said a witness who did not provide his name.

“The bullet went through his arm and through his chest,” he said. “We can confirm he’s dead. We heard there were two others injured, but we don’t know exactly how many in all.”

When protesters regrouped in the afternoon and surrounded the police station, gunfire was heard, the witness added.

Migrant workers trapped by violence

In Hlaingthaya township, a factory zone west of Yangon that was the scene of more than 50 deaths Monday, demonstrators staged anti-military protests in defiance of martial law, only to be met with more violence by security personnel.

“Police and soldiers even chased the protesters into small alleys and fired indiscriminately,” said one witness. “The number of casualties is not known yet.”

He said the protesters did not confront police and soldiers because their numbers were large and they had brought in bulldozers to clear away protester barricades.

Thousands of migrant workers from other parts of Myanmar had been trying to leave the township since early morning to escape the crackdown, a Hlaingthaya resident said.

“The migrant workers are leaving for their hometowns because of insecurity here. There are no jobs around for them, and they have to take up the duties of security guards at night,” he said.

People cannot move around safely in the wards given indiscriminate shooting that has occurred for the last three days, he added.

Another unnamed man said that the wards are almost deserted.

“We all are furious. To say it frankly, we just want to hit them back,” he said, referring to security forces.

Indiscriminate gunfire kills teen

Video footage of soldiers and police brutally suppressing people at a peaceful nighttime sit-in Yangon’s Dawbon township on Monday have gone viral on social media, with one clip showing security personnel shooting a demonstrator and dragging him naked on the a street.

Protests were staged in other townships in Yangon region, also under martial law, including North Okkalapa, where scores of young people led a demonstration, and in North Dagon, where security forces cleared makeshift barricades set up by protesters and fired their rifles down side streets, damaging cars and houses.

“The more they press, the more we will rise up,” said one defiant township resident. “Everything the military council is doing is total injustice. The security of the people has been diminishing. Some people are now having ideas to fight back until death.”

One protester died during a crackdown in South Dagon, witnesses told RFA.

In Mandalay’s Thabeikkyin township, a 14-year-old girl and a man were killed when police and soldiers fired at protesters, residents said.

Local residents who were checking traffic entering their town from Mogok to the north of Mandalay, confronted policemen inside a car who shot their way out as they left the scene. About 200 soldiers who entered the area fired indiscriminately at residents, hitting the teenager who was in her house, residents said.

Several others were injured, some seriously, and about 20 people were taken away by security forces, they said.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a watchdog group, said that as of Tuesday, 2,181 people had been arrested, charged, or sentenced in relation to the military coup, with 1,862 still being held or with outstanding warrants.

In the ancient town of Bagan, about 2,200 civil servants, including police, bankers, and General Administration Department staffers, comprising over 80 percent of state employees in the area, have joined the civil disobedience movement running in tandem with the protests, locals said.

Some of the workers have stood their ground despite threats by their superiors who are angry that the striking employees have nearly brought state services to a stop.

Rights organizations lambasted the military regime for the continued violence against peaceful protesters.

“They have prepared themselves to carry out the worst human rights violations,” activist Nickey Diamond from the Southeast Asia-based Fortify Rights NGO, referring to the ruling military council.

“They have taken up positions in every township and have killed and injured many protesters. Their actions can be seen as crimes against humanity,” he told RFA.

RFA was unable to reach a military spokesman for comment.

Bangkok (CNN)Thailand has reportedly pushed back more than 2,000 people attempting to flee neighboring Myanmar following a series of air strikes carried out by the ruling junta in the southeast of the country.

Activist group the Karen Information Center said 2,009 people are now internally displaced and hiding in the jungle, having been forced back into Myanmar shortly after crossing the border with Thailand.

Thousands of people fled their homes in Myanmar's southeastern Karen state Sunday, after Myanmar's military jets carried out a bombing raid on villages controlled by an ethnic armed group. The Karen National Union (KNU), which holds large swathes of territory in the borderlands with Thailand, had overrun an army post near the border, killing 10 people, Reuters reported.

The reported influx of people fleeing into neighboring Thailand marks a new phase in the deepening crisis for Myanmar, which was thrown into turmoil when the military seized power in a coup on February 1 and ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The airstrikes follow a bloody military crackdown over the weekend that was widely condemned internationally. At least 114 people were reportedly killed by the junta's security forces on Saturday, in the deadliest day since protests against Gen. Min Aung Hlaing's military regime began two months ago.

Myanmar security forces have killed at least 510 people since the coup, with 14 shot dead on Monday including children and young people, advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said.

'We don't want to have any influx into our area'

The KNU said 3,000 people crossed the Salween River into Thailand, fleeing the military's aerial bombardments, and 2,000 were pushed back.

Activist group the Karen Women's Organization (KWO), which operates within Karen state and refugee camps in Thailand, confirmed the air strikes had forced 10,000 people in the state from their homes, and 3,000 had crossed into Thailand.

CNN has not been able to reach Thai authorities for comment, but Reuters cited Thichai Jindaluang, the governor of Thailand's Mae Hong Son province, denying refugees were being pushed back.

When CNN reached out to Thailand's Foreign Ministry, they directed us to a statement published by local media from the ministry spokesman, Tanee Sangrat, saying, "Those reports cite information solely from non-official sources without confirming the facts from official sources on the ground which affirmed that no such pushback took place."

On Tuesday, Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said officials had not forced refugees back to Myanmar, but they had spoken with some of the people who had entered Thailand.

"After we asked questions (such as) what are their problems in your country, they said, 'there's no problem.' So, since there is no problem, can they just return home for the time being? We didn't force them (to return) with guns, we even shook hands and blessed them good luck," Prayut said in a media briefing.

"We have to take care of them based on humanitarian principle. We have a lot of experience... There is no way we will push them back if the fighting is still ongoing. But if there is no fighting now, can they return to their home?"

On Monday, Prayut said his government did not want refugees to cross the border but were preparing for a potential influx.

Myanmar is a 'conflict zone'

Thailand has hosted tens of thousands of refugees in nine main camps along its border with Myanmar for three decades, following armed conflicts, human rights abuses and persecution of ethnic minorities by the Myanmar military.

Most of those who crossed the border over the weekend are from Mu Traw district, where the bombing has been concentrated. Many of those are people who have already fled their homes and are living in the Ei Tu Hta displacement camp.

Photos provided to CNN by the KNU purport to show Myanmar refugees being denied entry into Thailand. And video shot by a Karen villager and published by Reuters showed refugees boarding boats under the watch of Thai soldiers.

Armed rebel groups have been fighting the Myanmar military on and off for the past 70 years in the country's ethnic states but fighting in some areas has increased since the February 1 coup.

The KNU said three civilians were killed in the strikes, which began on Saturday and continued into Monday. Military jets also killed at least two members of the KNU militia Saturday.

David Eubank, founder of the relief organization Free Burma Rangers, said it was the first time in 20 years that airstrikes had been carried out in the area. Despite the government's denials, several human rights groups have criticized the Thai authorities.

"Forcibly sending people back into a conflict zone amounts to refoulement and is against international refugee law," said the European Karen Network, a group of Karen communities from several countries in Europe, in a statement Monday.