Fake news, online hate fuel Indonesia sentiment vs Rohingya

JAKARTA: Arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid camps in Bangladesh 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 country’s 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.

Last December, hundreds of university students entered a government function hall in the city of Banda Aceh that hosted 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 High Commissioner for Refugees (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, said Hokky Situngkir, TikTok analyst at the 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 Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Indonesian 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 — which is not a signatory to 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 were written by a real UNHCR account.

A post sharing a report that Indonesian Vice President Ma’ruf Amin was considering moving the refugees to an island was viewed 3 million times.

A verified account wrote underneath: “Big no! It is better to expel them; no use in sheltering them.”

Ismail Fahmi, analyst for social media monitor Drone Emprit, told AFP the narrative “seems coordinated” but presented as if “it was organic.”

The campaign started with posts from anonymous confession accounts, and then several users with large followings replied with antiRohingya messages, making the narrative appear to be trending, he said.

Locals say social media is making such anti-Rohingya sentiment appear widespread, but that was not reflected across Aceh from day to day.

“It seems massive when we observe it on social media,” said Aceh fishermen community secretarygeneral Azwir Nazar, acknowledging that Rohingya defenders online were treated as a “common enemy.”

But, he said, “In reality, in our daily lives, things seem normal.”