900 Rohingya fled by boat to Indonesia in recent months as they were brutally expelled from Myanmar. However, they were refused to dock there twice. Only after an appeal from the UN were they finally allowed to disembark.
A drama involving Rohingya refugees from Myanmar has been unfolding in Indonesia for days. Last week alone, five boats with almost 900 people on board disembarked in the province of Aceh, in the north of the island of Sumatra, reported the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Around 250 of them have been on an odyssey at sea since Thursday, after the local population prevented them from disembarking in two places.
Only after an appeal from the United Nations and several human rights groups were they finally able to disembark on Sunday. According to Mitra Salima Suryono, UNHCR spokesperson in Indonesia, the refugees spent between one and two months on the open sea after leaving Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The refugee camp located there, made up of many individual camps with 600,000 to one million refugees from the former Burma, is considered the largest in the world. Most people have been living there in makeshift shelters for years.
“Life-threatening risks”
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority who were brutally expelled from their predominantly Buddhist homeland, Myanmar, in 2017. At that time, hundreds of thousands of people fled the military offensive in Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh to the west. The United Nations describes the persecution of the Rohingya as genocide. Members of the minority lost their citizenship under a law passed by Myanmar’s military junta in 1983.
“In the search for solutions, Rohingya refugees are once again putting their lives at risk,” said Ann Maymann, head of UNHCR in Indonesia. “These are trips by people who have no opportunities and have lost hope.” Many fishermen and residents in Aceh initially welcomed the first boats last week and provided food and accommodation to the refugees. But one of the boats was rejected at two coastal locations.
The Indonesian government, which has not signed the Geneva Refugee Convention, is often accused of inaction in its treatment of refugees. Activists called for the provision of humanitarian assistance, safety and security to the Rohingya and for respect for the principle of non-refoulement. “Indonesia has an obligation to help them,” said Usman Hamid, executive director of Amnesty International Indonesia. (APA/dpa)