Indonesia Relocates Rejected Rohingya Refugees Stranded on Beach

Facts

• Authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province agreed on Wednesday to move a group of 219 Rohingya refugees by ferry from a beach to a temporary shelter in Lhokseumawe, in coordination with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, after locals threatened to force them back to sea.¹
• The latest arrivals, mostly women and children, came ashore reportedly weak and malnourished on Tuesday night near Sabang, off the northern tip of Sumatra island, taking total arrivals of members of Myanmar's Muslim minority in Indonesia to more than 1K over the past week.²
• This relocation comes as another group of Rohingya refugees that landed in Bireuen on Sunday was taken to the former Immigration Office in Lhokseumawe. Previously, they were sheltered in emergency tents built on the beach.³
• The East Aceh Police on Thursday named three residents as suspects in a case involving an attempt to smuggle Rohingya refugees into Indonesia, including one who was arrested on Sunday while using a truck to transport 36 people.⁴
• More than 700K Rohingya Muslims have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar since a military crackdown in 2017 to allegedly overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. Some of them have left the camps by sea to try to reach Malaysia, with many ending up in Indonesia.⁵
• The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, congratulated Indonesia for upholding the rights of the Rohingya and urged a regional emergency response to save lives. He further argued that Myanmar's military junta is the root cause of this crisis.⁶

Sources: ¹France 24, ²Reuters, ³Kompas.id (a), ⁴Kompas.id (b), ⁵Abc news and ⁶Ohchr.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Al jazeera. The Rohingya people have desperately risked their lives crossing the ocean for years, trying to find a safe place to live after suffering human rights abuses in Myanmar. This crisis has exposed structural flaws in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as its rules made it possible for Myanmar to prevent regional powers from investigating the scale of human rights abuses and taking action to halt them.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by Dw. It's hypocritical to criticize solely ASEAN when Western democracies have done nothing to help the Rohingya — even though the International Court of Justice has long called for measures to protect those persecuted. While this is likely to be a consequence of fears that Myanmar would strengthen ties with Beijing if pressed, not acting to preserve the universal validity of human rights can only damage the West's reputation — the plight of the Rohingya at sea is the world's responsibility.