Indonesian rescuers race to save Rohingya refugees from capsized boat

• Indonesian authorities and fishermen rescued 69 Rohingya refugees after their vessel capsized off Aceh province.
• The rescue was initiated after local fishermen spotted the boat the day before.
• The group, consisting of 42 men, 18 women, and nine children, was handed over to immigration officials.

On Thursday, Indonesian authorities and fishermen rescued at least 69 Rohingya refugees after their vessel capsized a day earlier in the waters off Aceh province. The Search and Rescue Agency in Banda Aceh dispatched a ship to locate a capsized wooden boat on Wednesday evening, following information from local fishermen who had spotted the craft that morning. The search-and-rescue team finally located the boat and survivors on Thursday morning after encountering initial difficulties in finding the vessel in the choppy waters off the coast of Aceh.

“We managed to find the victims at 9 a.m., with the boat capsized and all of its passengers standing on top of the boat’s hull. And then we moved to evacuate the victims,” said Ibnu Harris Al-Hussain, head of Banda Aceh’s Search and Rescue Agency.

“We managed to find 69 people who are alive.”

The group, consisting of 42 men, 18 women, and nine children, has since been handed over to immigration officials. It remains unclear how many refugees were aboard the small craft when it capsized on Wednesday, but local fishermen initially rescued six survivors.

The mostly Muslim Rohingya, referred to by the UN as the “world’s most persecuted minority,” have endured decades of persecution in Myanmar. In 2017, more than 730,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh following a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military, which the UN described as amounting to genocide.

Thousands have been attempting to flee the squalid and overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to Southeast Asian countries, with Indonesia witnessing a sharp rise in refugee numbers since November. Indonesia, despite not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, has a history of accepting refugees on humanitarian grounds when they arrive on the country’s shores. However, the recent surge of Rohingya arrivals has sparked backlash on social media and encountered some pushback from Acehnese people.

Last year, nearly 4,500 people attempted to relocate to another country through deadly sea crossings, often on rickety boats, resulting in about 569 Rohingya dying or going missing. This marked the highest figure in nine years.

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