Greater than 100 Rohingya refugees, together with ladies and youngsters, have landed in Indonesia’s westernmost province, officers say, however locals have threatened to push them again out to sea.
A whole bunch extra of the largely Muslim refugees from Myanmar have been trapped on board one other two unseaworthy vessels adrift within the Andaman Sea, the workplace of the United Nations Excessive Fee for Refugees (UNHCR) mentioned on Saturday.
The newest arrivals reached land after greater than 1,000 Rohingya refugees landed in Aceh province final month, the most important wave of Rohingya to succeed in Indonesia since 2015.
The newest group of Rohingya landed on Le Meulee seashore on the island of Sabang earlier than daybreak on Saturday, mentioned Miftah Reduce Ade, chief of the fishing neighborhood in Aceh.
“They are mostly women and children, and they are in a weak condition,” he mentioned.
Indonesia will not be a signatory to the 1951 UN Conference on Refugees however has a historical past of taking in refugees after they arrive on the nation’s shores.
Almost 1,000,000 Rohingya dwell in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar close to Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.
1000’s of them threat their lives annually on lengthy and costly sea journeys, typically in flimsy boats that sail from Bangladesh, to attempt to attain Malaysia or Indonesia.
A 19-year-old Rohingya who gave his identify as Deluarsah mentioned the group left Bangladesh in early November and spent greater than 20 days at sea in harmful circumstances.
“We come here with the single boat. The ocean is very dangerous,” Deluarsah mentioned, including that he was “happy” to have landed in Indonesia.
The UNHCR urged international locations across the Andaman Sea to “swiftly deploy their full search and rescue capacities” to search out the opposite two boats it mentioned had suffered engine failure and have been “aimlessly drifting”.
“UNHCR is concerned that food and water may be running out and there is a significant risk of fatalities in the coming days if people are not rescued and disembarked to safety,” the company mentioned in an announcement.
