Laweueng, Indonesia:
Rohingya refugees received emergency medical care after a boat carrying nearly 200 people came ashore in Indonesia on Monday, authorities said.
Each year, thousands of the predominantly Muslim Rohingya, heavily persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, risk their lives on long, expensive sea voyages – often in poor-quality ships – in an attempt to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.
The wooden craft arrived at a beach in Indonesia’s westernmost province of Aceh around 5:30 pm (1030 GMT), local police spokesman Winardy said.
“One hundred and eighty-five Rohingya immigrants landed in Pidie (district). The figure consists of 83 adult males, 70 adult females and 32 children,” Winardy, who goes by only one name, said in a statement.
The refugees were temporarily hosted at a local facility, where health workers treated the sick, Winardy added.
Some looked very weak and thin and were put on a drip by medical personnel, according to AFP journalists.
A health worker told AFP some were “suffering from severe dehydration. Some children were vomiting”.
Details of the length and circumstances of their journey were not immediately available, but a young arrival said they had departed from Bangladesh.
“We came from a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh hoping that Indonesia will give us the chance of education,” said 14-year-old Umar Faruq.
Marfian, a leader of a local fishing community on the ground not long after the refugees arrived, said “some of the refugees came ashore in poor conditions”.
“When they got to the shoreline, the locals helped by feeding them,” Marfian said.
He noted that some Acehnese fishermen had helped Rohingya boats ashore in recent years, but the last boat was carried ashore by the wind as fishermen had become more reluctant to help.
Winardy stressed that authorities were coordinating the refugee response “as their landing in Aceh becomes more and more common”.
The boat that landed in Aceh on Monday came a day after another ship carrying 57 Rohingya refugees made landfall in the province after a month at sea.
In November, two boats carrying a total of 229 Rohingya landed in the same province, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
Relatively affluent Malaysia is a favorite destination for refugees, but many land first in Muslim-majority Indonesia, which is considered more welcoming.
UN agencies and human rights groups have called on states in the region for urgent help after several boats carrying Rohingya were adrift in the Indian Ocean for weeks.
The UNHCR said over the weekend it was feared some 180 Rohingya who had been at sea for weeks had died after relatives said they had lost contact and presumed no one on board had survived.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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