A ramshackle fishing boat carrying 185 Rohingya refugees has landed on the coast of Indonesia's Aceh province.

The refugees, who belong to the Muslim minority originally from Myanmar, have spent 40 days at sea.

Apparently they made the dangerous journey to escape the overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.

After an odyssey across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, they finally reached Kuala Gigieng beach in Aceh Besar on Sunday.

Till Fähnders

Political correspondent for Southeast Asia.

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More than half of them are women and children, Ridwan Jamil of the civil protection agency told news outlets.

For the most part, they are believed to be Rohingya family members who had previously fled to another Southeast Asian country.

A local police chief told the AP that four of the refugees needed medical treatment.

A woman is also pregnant.

Photographs show groups of people sitting and lying exhausted on the floor.

This is now a familiar sight for local residents.

In the weeks before, more and more boats with Rohingya refugees had arrived on the coast of Aceh.

At the end of December, two boats with a total of 240 people landed in the province in the north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Another boat carrying 180 people was reported missing after relatives were unable to contact the occupants.

It is feared that all occupants have died.

Corpses float on the water

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) had already warned in early December of a “dramatic increase” in risky Rohingya crossings.

A total of 2,000 people are said to have attempted it last year, and fewer than 300 in 2021. At least 200 people died in 2022, not counting the 180 missing.

"Sadly, this makes it one of the deadliest years at sea in the region," said Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR Asia Pacific Director.

In late December, after a month at sea, one of the boats reached shore in Aceh.

The people were starving and parched.

A video shows 19-year-old Fatimah bin Ismail crying on the phone to relatives upon arrival.

20 people died on the trip, she reported.

"The bodies floated on the water." After some time, water entered the boat.

A Vietnamese ship also rescued 154 Rohingya from a sinking boat, and a Sri Lankan Navy ship rescued 104 people.

Human rights activists see the reason for the increase in refugee boats in the increasingly difficult living conditions in the refugee camps near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.

Around a million Rohingya live there in cramped conditions, including around 750,000 who fled across the border in 2017 following a brutal military operation against the Rohingya in Myanmar.

In Bangladesh, they are not allowed to leave the camps without a good reason, the children have little chance of an education.

Since the military coup in Myanmar on February 1, 2021, the Rohingya have had even less hope of returning to their homeland.

Due to the monsoon weather, the refugees have only a roughly four-month window from late autumn to early spring to attempt the dangerous crossing.

The destinations of the refugees are mostly the coasts of Thailand, Indonesia or Malaysia.

Again and again it happens that boats are turned away by the coastguards.

Aceh has shown itself to be particularly receptive to the Muslim Rohingya.

In the provinces, people follow an orthodox Islam, strict Sharia rules apply, up to and including flogging.

It is unclear whether there are any other refugee boats off the coast of Aceh.

Fishermen had recently spotted a total of three boats near a smaller Indonesian island.