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Indonesia urges refugee convention signatories to step up on Rohingya
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Newly arrived Rohingya refugees wait to board trucks to transfer them to a temporary shelter after villagers rejected their relocated camp in Banda Aceh, Aceh on Dec. 11, 2023. Some of the more than 300 Rohingya refugees who arrived on the western coasts of Indonesia on Dec. 10 were transferred to a temporary shelter during the visit of a United Nations representative. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
T
he Aceh administration said that it was struggling to find locations to host some 1,600 Rohingya refugees amid rejection from the local population, as efforts to crack down on traffickers continue.
Boatloads of Rohingya refugees have landed on Indonesia's western coast since November, with the latest arrivals being last weekend.
On Sunday, several boats carrying between 300 and 400 refugees arrived in several spots in Aceh against a backdrop of an increasingly frustrated local population, sparking angered residents to usher over a hundred freshly arrived refugees to the Aceh governor’s office complex in Banda Aceh as a form of protest.
Authorities then moved these refugees to a scout camp in Pidie regency, but residents there similarly rejected them. Authorities sent the group of refugees back to the terrace of the governor’s office on Monday noon.
Reports of a Rohingya refugee getting physically assaulted by residents in Pidie have also emerged since.
“There isn’t one area that’s reserved for the Rohingya refugees, especially considering the number has grown to over 1,000 and fulfilling basic essential needs would be difficult,” said interim Aceh governor Achmad Marzuki on Monday, as quoted by kompas.com.
Over 1.2 million Rohingya people have been displaced in Myanmar since military violence against the ethnic minority began in 2017, driving them away mostly to refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, a Bangladeshi town now hosting nearly a million Rohingya refugees.
