More than 200 ethnic Rohingya came ashore in Indonesia’s Aceh province late on Wednesday, taking total arrivals of members of the Myanmar Muslim minority to more than 1,000 for the week, a leader of the province’s fishing community said.
During November to April, when the seas are calmer, many members of the persecuted minority leave Myanmar on rickety boats for Thailand, Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Acehnese fishing community chief Miftach Cut Adek said that the latest arrivals, 216 mostly of them women and children, “weak and lacking nutrition,” had arrived near Sabang, off the northern tip of Sumatra island, late on Tuesday.
Mitra Salima Suryono, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency in Indonesia, said there did not appear to be any particular reason for the big number of Rohingya arriving.
“The reason why they migrated is to find a safer life,” she said. Mitra said Aceh villagers had tried to prevent hundreds of Rohingya arriving in the Bireuen area in northeast Sumatra last week although they eventually came ashore on Sunday.
For years, Rohingya have left Buddhist-majority Myanmar where they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.
Nearly a million Rohingya live in refugee camps in the Bangladeshi border district of Cox’s Bazar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.
Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry has said it “has no obligation nor capacity to accommodate refugees, let alone to provide a permanent solution.”
Usman Hamid, the director of rights group Amnesty International Indonesia, called for authorities to take in the Rohingya and talk with neighbors, especially Malaysia and Thailand, where Rohingya also often stop.
Three boats filled with more than 500 Rohingya refugees landed in Indonesia’s westernmost province on Sunday, a UN agency said, in one of the biggest arrivals since Myanmar launched a military crackdown on the minority group in 2017.
The mostly Muslim Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar, and thousands risk their lives each year on long and expensive sea journeys, often in flimsy boats, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.
United Nations refugee agency protection associate Faisal Rahman told AFP one boat had arrived in Aceh province’s Bireuen district with 256 people aboard, while at least 241 others arrived in Aceh’s Pidie region and a smaller boat carrying 36 arrived in East Aceh.
“They were found in several spots,” Rahman said Sunday. Of the 256 aboard the Bireuen boat, 110 were women and 60 were children, he said.
It was the same boat that locals had pushed back out to sea on Thursday, leaving it stranded off the coast for several days, according to Rahman.
“It’s confirmed … because many people were identified by security officials during the landing,” he said.—AFP
