Rohingya hate in Indonesia fueled by online fake news
Arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid Bangladesh camps after weeks at sea late last year, hundreds of Rohingya refugees came to shore only to be turned around and pushed back. The persecuted Myanmar minority were previously welcomed in the ultra-conservative Aceh province, with many locals sympathetic because of their own long history of war. But a wave of more than 1,500 refugees in recent months has been treated differently.
A spate of online misinformation in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation has stoked what experts say is rising anti-Rohingya sentiment culminating in pushback, hate speech and attacks. In December, hundreds of university students entered a government function hall in Banda Aceh city hosting 137 Rohingya, chanting, kicking refugees’ belongings and demanding they be deported. The refugees were relocated.
“The attack is not an isolated act but the result of a coordinated online campaign of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech,” the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said. On social media, anti-Rohingya videos have been spreading since late last year, racking up more than 90 million views on TikTok alone in November, according to Hokky Situngkir, TikTok analyst at Bandung Fe Institute.
It began after some local media outlets reported the Rohingya’s arrival with sensational headlines, said Situngkir. The reports have framed the mostly Muslim Rohingya as criminals with bad attitudes and Indonesian community leaders have reinforced this narrative. Some TikTok users have reshared the sensational articles and videos, which would help generate more views and money. “Sometimes when the sensation is too big, it turns out to be misinformation,” Situngkir told AFP.
‘Seems coordinated’
President Joko Widodo has called for action against human traffickers responsible for smuggling Rohingya and said “temporary humanitarian assistance will be provided” to refugees while prioritizing local communities.
But a few days after the attack on a refugee shelter, the Indonesian navy pushed away a Rohingya boat approaching the Aceh coast. Jakarta — not a signatory of the UN refugee convention — has appealed to neighboring countries to do more to take in the Rohingya.
On TikTok, dozens of fake UNHCR accounts have flooded Rohingya videos with comments. “If you don’t want to help, just give them one empty island so they can live there,” one read, presented as if it was written by a real UNHCR account. A post sharing a report that Indonesia’s Vice President Ma’ruf Amin was considering moving the refugees to an island was viewed three million times. A verified account wrote underneath: “Big no! It is better to expel them, no use in sheltering them.”