Nearly 300 Rohingya land at Sumatran city
NEARLY 300 Rohingya migrants have reached Indonesia claiming to have been at sea for seven months, United Nations officials said, in one of the biggest landings by the persecuted Myanmar minority in years.
The migrants – including more than a dozen children – were spotted at sea on a wooden boat by locals who helped them land early yesterday near Lhokseumawe city on Sumatra’s northern coast, officials said.
“From their testimonies, they said that they have been adrift for seven months,” said UN refugee agency coordinator Oktina, who like many Indonesians, goes by one name.
“We have seen their condition is very weak at the moment,” she added.
At least one member of the group – which included 102 men, 181 women and 14 children – was ill and had to be rushed to a local hospital for treatment, said the area’s military chief Roni Mahendra.
Images from Lhokseumawe showed migrants sitting on the ground in a makeshift building with their meagre possessions.
Locals had donated food and clothing.
“We’re concerned about their condition. They need help in the name of humanity ... They’re human beings like us,” said Lhokseumawe resident Aisyah.
The landing comes after about 100 Rohingya, mostly women and children, arrived in the same area in June.
Both groups that came ashore in June – and the latest arrivals – may have been part of an estimated 800 Rohingya who reportedly left southern Bangladesh earlier this year, said Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, an NGO that focuses on the Rohingya crisis.
About 30 migrants in the original group were believed to have died at sea, Lewa added.
“This is the biggest (arrival) we have seen since 2015,” Lewa told reporters.
Around a million Rohingya live in cramped and squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh – next to their native Myanmar – where human traffickers run lucrative operations promising to find them sanctuary abroad.