March 25, 2024
JAKARTA – The bodies of three Rohingya refugees whose boat capsized off the coast of West Aceh have been found over the weekend, while dozens of others remain missing.
A wooden boat believed to be carrying around 150 Rohingya capsized at sea last week, leading local authorities and fishermen in West Aceh to search for survivors.
The bodies of two women were found on Saturday morning and the body of a boy was found later in the evening off the coast of neighboring Aceh Jaya regency, according to Aceh Jaya Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) head Fajri on Sunday, kompas.id reported.
The bodies were taken to a hospital in Aceh Jaya for identification.
Local fishermen reportedly spotted many more bodies at sea. Survivors of the accident told the authorities that a number of fellow refugees had been lost at sea.
Over 70 Rohingya refugees are “presumed dead or missing”, which if confirmed would make the incident “the biggest maritime tragedy in Asian waters this year”, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch on social media platform X on Friday.
Seventy-five others had been rescued as of Sunday evening and were taking shelter at a former Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) building in Johan Pahlawan subdistrict, West Aceh.
Aceh Jaya search and rescue team head of operations Mirza Safrinadi said on Saturday that officials would keep searching the waters off the coast of Calang, Aceh Jaya regency, for the rest of the missing people, Antara reported.
The mostly Muslim Rohingya ethnic group has faced persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and suffered systematic military violence beginning in 2017 that forced many to flee to Bangladesh or other neighboring countries.
Indonesia has seen an unprecedented wave of Rohingya refugee arrivals, with over 2,300 arriving last year, UNHCR data shows, a yearly record. This was driven by worsening conditions in camps in Bangladesh and the continuing threat of violence in the Rohingya’s native Myanmar.
While Indonesia has not signed the 1951 United Nations refugee convention and, therefore, has no international legal obligation to host refugees, it has for decades accepted refugees on a temporary basis for resettlement in third countries.
But resistance to Rohingya arrivals has been increasing since late last year. In December 2023, Aceh university students protested the Rohingya presence in Banda Aceh and stormed a refugee shelter in an effort to force them out.
In the same month, the Indonesian Navy drove away a boat carrying Rohingya off the coast of Sumatra.
Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch urged Indonesia to help Rohingya refugees whenever they were found in the country’s waters and said there should be “no pushback”.
“[The rescue attempt] is the right call by authorities, though it’d be better if the boat didn’t capsize in the first place,” Andreas told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Activist Wahyu Susilo of Migrant Care, meanwhile, said the incident demonstrated the urgent need to help the Rohingya people.
“This is a humanitarian tragedy, so we cannot just sit back [and allow it to continue],” Wahyu said.