Indonesia urges refugee convention signatories to accept Rohingya

JAKARTA: The Aceh administration said that it was struggling to find locations to host some 1,600 Rohingya refugees amid rejection from the local population, as efforts to crack down on traffickers continue.

Boatloads of Rohingya refugees have landed on Indonesia's western coast since November, with the latest arrivals being last weekend.

On Sunday (Dec 10), several boats carrying between 300 and 400 refugees arrived in several spots in Aceh against a backdrop of an increasingly frustrated local population, sparking angered residents to usher over a hundred freshly arrived refugees to the Aceh governor’s office complex in Banda Aceh as a form of protest.

Authorities then moved these refugees to a scout camp in Pidie regency, but residents there similarly rejected them. Authorities sent the group of refugees back to the terrace of the governor’s office on Monday noon.

Reports of a Rohingya refugee getting physically assaulted by residents in Pidie have also emerged since.

“There isn’t one area that’s reserved for the Rohingya refugees, especially considering the number has grown to over 1,000 and fulfilling basic essential needs would be difficult,” said interim Aceh governor Achmad Marzuki on Monday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Over 1.2 million Rohingya people have been displaced in Myanmar since military violence against the ethnic minority began in 2017, driving them away mostly to refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, a Bangladeshi town now hosting nearly a million Rohingya refugees.

Despite it being a non-signatory nation, Indonesia has for decades opened itself up for temporary stays for refugees awaiting resettlement in third countries on humanitarian grounds.

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday reminded that countries that have signed the refugee convention should step up and fulfill their responsibilities.

“We underline that this is an international responsibility, especially for the issue of resettlement. We ask that countries that have signed the international convention increase their efforts in the Rohingya case,” the ministry’s spokesperson Lalu M. Iqbal told reporters on Tuesday.

The people of Aceh, though, are seemingly unwilling to wait for peace in Myanmar when it comes to refugees. Initially, Aceh was welcoming to the Rohingya refugees, allowing them to stay while raising community funds for essential supplies.

But with the number of refugees spiking, supposed bad behaviour and rife disinformation taking hold on social media, the warm sentiment has grown colder, with some residents physically pushing the arriving boats away from the coastline.

President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo said on Friday that “there is a strong suspicion that human trafficking networks are involved” and that “Indonesia will take firm action against them”.

Last week, Aceh police caught a 70-year-old person believed to be among the traffickers responsible for the recent arrivals. The person, police said, spoke in Bengali and charged an estimated Rp 28 million (US$1,787) per person for the transportation, kompas.com reported. - The Jakarta Post/ANN

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