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fter being accommodated for over one month, the Aceh Immigration Office sent 129 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar on Wednesday to Medan, North Sumatra.

“We have been ordered by the Immigration Director General to move the refugees to Medan today,” Aceh Immigration Office head Wilmar Sayuti said on Wednesday.

Wilmar said he could not say whether the refugees will be sent to other countries because they were still waiting for confirmation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“The decision and authority are in the hands of the UNHCR. For certain the refugees will be temporarily quarantined under the coordination of International Organization for Migration (IOM) while they fill out all the required documents as refugees,” Wilmar said.

The 129 Rohingya refugees were temporarily sheltered at Malahayati Port in Krueng Raya after being rescued from their stalled wooden boat by Acehnese fishermen on Feb. 16, 2011. They were reportedly in a state of confusion after their engine died.

The refugees were discovered by the fishermen at 3 a.m. while they were drifting in Laweung waters around Pidie in Aceh.

“The presence of the refugees had actually already been detected by the fishermen when they were still off the East Aceh coastal area. The fishermen became aware that the drifting boat held refugees when they were swept into Laweung waters,” Krueng Raya Water Police chief M. Zaini said.

They discovered the people on the boat were in poor health, with many suffering from dehydration. Among them was a 13-year-old child.

Nor Alam, one of the Myanmarese refugees, said that they had travelled by boat for 20 days. Seven died during the ordeal. They were apparently on their way to Australia in an effort to escape oppression and torture in their own country.

This discovery of stranded refugees in Aceh waters was not the first. There were three similar cases in Aceh in 2009.

The first incident in 2009 took place on Jan. 7, 2009, when 193 Myanmarese refugees were stranded in Aceh waters after travelling for 28 days.

The second incident came on Feb. 3, 2009, when 220 Myanmarese refugees were stranded in Pidie waters in East Aceh. At least 22 of the passengers were reported to have died.

Refugees from Myanmar were frequently found in Aceh waters due to Aceh location on busy international shipping routes where a large number of ships sail to the south to Australia and New Zealand and vice versa.