A protester belonging to the Islamic Defenders Front holds a placard calling to “stop the massacre of Muslim Rohingya” during a rally near the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, yesterday.
JAKARTA: Two Indonesians have been detained over a plot to bomb the Myanmar embassy in Jakarta, officials said yesterday, as radicals rallying in the city called for “jihad in Myanmar” to avenge Muslim deaths.
The incidents highlight the growing anger in Muslim-majority Indonesia over a string of religious clashes in largely-Buddhist Myanmar that have left many minority Muslims dead and tens of thousands displaced.
Around 1,000 angry hardliners from the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) converged on Myanmar’s embassy in Jakarta yesterday, brandishing banners that read “we want to kill Myanmar Buddhists” and “stop genocide in Myanmar”.
They torched the Myanmar flag, while chanting “burn down the embassy” and demanding to speak to officials inside, as hundreds of police in riot gear stood guard.
Earlier, officials said anti-terrorist police had detained two men suspected of planning a bomb attack on the Myanmar embassy.
The suspects were arrested late on Thursday travelling by motorbike in a busy residential area in the south of the capital with five assembled pipe bombs, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said in a statement.
The men, Sefa Riano, 28, and Achmad Taufiq, 21, planned to launch the attack yesterday, said a senior source at the country’s anti-terrorist police, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The head of Indonesia’s anti-terrorist agency, Ansyaad Mbai, said the target was the Myanmar embassy.
AFP
