Six dead as boat carrying Rohingya fleeing Myanmar arrives in Indonesia

Ninety-six Rohingya refugees, including seven children, are stranded on Sumatra island after escaping on a rickety boat.

Six people have died as nearly 100 Rohingya landed by boat in Indonesia’s Aceh province in the latest wave of arrivals from Myanmar in recent days.

Miftach Tjut Adek, chief of a local fishing community, told the Reuters news agency on Thursday that 96 people, including seven children, were still at a beach in the eastern part of Aceh on Sumatra island.

“There is no solution yet. They are still at the beach,” Miftach said.

Two bodies were found on the shore and four floating in the sea, said Saiful Anwar, a village official in East Aceh.

“According to information from residents, these people were stranded at around 4am [21:00 GMT],” Saiful told the AFP news agency.

Eight sick people were taken for medical treatment, he added.

East Aceh acting district head Amrullah M Ridha told reporters the refugees would be kept in tents on the beach until the authorities found shelter for them.

About 300 Rohingya came ashore last week in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra. The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has called on Indonesia’s government to ensure their safety.

An estimated 2,500 Rohingya arrived by boat in Aceh from January 2023 to March 2024, as many as had arrived in Indonesia in the previous eight years, according to the UN agency.

The mainly Muslim ethnic group faces persecution in Myanmar, and hundreds of thousands have fled military crackdowns, seeking shelter in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Thousands have left on perilous journeys for Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia on rickety boats, taking advantage of calmer seas between October and April.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar regards the Rohingya as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denying them citizenship and subjecting them to abuse.

Myanmar was under military rule for five decades until 2015 elections when Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory. The military led a coup against her government on February 1, 2021, prompting mass protests that evolved into an armed uprising after the generals responded with force.

The Rohingya have been bearing the brunt of the latest fighting because they have been forcibly drafted into the army despite not being recognised as citizens.

Men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 can be drafted into the armed forces for two years at a time, and this term can be extended to five years when a national emergency is declared.

The Myanmar military has repeatedly cracked down on the Rohingya in Rakhine state since the 1970s.

In 2017, a military crackdown forced more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees to flee across the border into Bangladesh. During crackdowns, refugees have often reported rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security forces.

The 2017 crackdown has been under investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague since 2019.