Departing from Bangladesh, a hundred Rohingya refugees land in Indonesia
This photo taken and received from Indonesian police on December 28, 2021 shows officers preparing to send supplies to Rohingya refugees aboard a wooden vessel off Indonesia's Aceh province in Bireun (pictured).
AFP - HANDOUT
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Leaving from Bangladesh, a hundred Rohingya refugees, including dozens of children, landed on the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh, in the west of the country, this Sunday, March 6.
Advertising
Read more
A boat carrying more than a hundred Rohingya refugees, including dozens of children, docked early Sunday March 6 on the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh, in the west of the country, police said.
The boat, which left a Rohingya
camp
in Bangladesh, arrived shortly after 3 a.m. on a beach in the Bireun region.
“
General health check
”
It was carrying 114 people, including 58 men, 21 women and 35 children under the age of 15, police said.
“
We are going to carry out a general health check and Covid-19 antigen tests for these foreigners
,” local police chief Mike Hardy Wirapraja told AFP.
He said they would then be transferred to the neighboring region of Lhokseumawe which has a reception center for refugees.
"
We are originally from Burma but we fled to Bangladesh and we started our journey from Bangladesh
," one of the refugees, 11-year-old Omar Faruk, told an AFP reporter, adding that the group had been at sea for 25 days.
"
We left Bangladesh because the situation of the Rohingyas in the camp is not good,
it is getting very bad right now
," said the child, who left his mother in Bangladesh and followed his uncle to start a new life, preferably in a Muslim-majority country like Indonesia or Malaysia.
"
I came here because I want to improve my education
," he added.
Second arrival
This is the
second arrival of the persecuted minority in Indonesia,
a Muslim-majority country, in recent months.
More than 100 Rohingyas also arrived in Bireun in late December after drifting for days before
the Indonesian government allowed them to disembark and dragged their stricken boat ashore.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since 2017 after a military crackdown that included massacres and rape according to refugees.
(with AFP)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Indonesia
Bangladeshi
Burma
Rohingya
Refugees