VIRUEN, Indonesia: Three boats carrying more than 500 Rohingya refugees landed in Indonesia’s westernmost province on Sunday, a United Nations agency said. This is one of the largest arrivals since Myanmar began its military crackdown on ethnic minorities in 2017.
The Muslim-majority Rohingya are severely persecuted in Myanmar, with thousands risking their lives each year on long and expensive voyages, often in slow boats, to reach Malaysia and Indonesia. There is.
One boat arrived in Aceh province’s Bireng district with 256 people on board, and at least 241 people arrived in Aceh’s Pidi area with 36 people on board, UN refugee agency protection chief Faisal Rahman told AFP. A small boat arrived in East Aceh.
“They were found in several locations,” Rahman said Sunday. Of the 256 people on board the ship, 110 were women and 60 were children.
Rahman said it was the same ship that locals pushed back on Thursday and left offshore for several days.
“That was confirmed… as a number of people were identified by security officials during the landing,” he said.
The latest arrivals bring more than 800 refugees to land in Aceh this week alone, with 196 arriving on Tuesday and 147 on Wednesday, local officials said.
Journalists saw a Rohingya boat moored on the beach in Biroyen after the refugees disembarked.
The refugees were housed in temporary shelters, awaiting a decision on their safety from authorities, and were generally in good health.
Birweng regional secretary Ibrahim Ahmad told reporters on Sunday that refugee cases would be handled by other agencies, without providing details.
In Pidi, Marfian, a spokesperson for the local fishing community, like many Indonesians, confirmed that a boat carrying nearly 250 refugees had landed overnight.
One of them, 20-year-old Aziz Ullah, said he was living in a camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, before the group started their journey 16 days ago.
“(The reason behind) our journey is… because the Myanmar government has committed violence (against us) many times,” he said.