Over 110 Rohingya refugees came ashore in Indonesia’s Aceh province on Saturday after their boat almost sank, according to officials from the U.N. refugee agency and local government. This is as growing numbers arrive by sea in the Southeast Asian country.
The primarily Muslim Rohingya, who are originally from Myanmar and constitute the world’s largest stateless population, usually escape poor conditions in refugee camps on rickety boats to Thailand or the Muslim-majority of Indonesia and Malaysia between October and April, when the seas are calmer.
About 400 Rohingya arrived by boat last month in Aceh and North Sumatra province.
Mostly women and children,
The Rohingya who arrived on Saturday were mostly women and children who were brought ashore after their boat ran into difficulties, according to a statement by an official from the East Aceh regional government, Syamsul Bahri.
“They were rescued by fishermen because the boat they were on allegedly sustained some damage and nearly sank,” Syamsul had said.
Faisal Rahman, a UNHCR official, mentioned that a total of 116 refugees came ashore in East Aceh’s Birem Bayeun district.
About 1 million Rohingya are living in camps in Bangladesh in what U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has called “the biggest humanitarian refugee camp in the world”.
In Myanmar here majority of the population are Buddhist, they are regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia and are as a consequence, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.
Over 2,000 Rohingya arrived in Indonesia last year, a UNHCR data showed, a lot more than the combined total of arrivals in the previous four years.
