Jakarta: A large crowd of Indonesian students broke into a conference camp housing Rohingya refugees from Myanmar on Wednesday and demanded their deportation, CNN reported. Hundreds of Rohingya refugees were living in a convention camp in Banda Aceh city of Indonesia.
CNN reported, citing Reuters footage, that showed students wearing green jackets running into the building’s large basement, where crowds of Rohingya men, women and children were sitting on the floor and crying in fear. Was.
Authorities then evacuated the Rohingyas, some placing their belongings in plastic bags and loading them into trucks to take them to alternative shelter, as protesters watched.
In particular, according to CNN, Rohingya refugees have experienced increasing hostility and rejection in Indonesia as locals become frustrated with the number of boats arriving with the ethnic minority, who face persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. .
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has blamed human trafficking for the recent increase in arrivals, and has promised to work with international organizations to provide temporary shelter.
Arrivals surge between November and April, when the sea is calm, with Rohingya taking boats to neighboring Thailand and Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia.
Wariza Anis Munander, a 23-year-old student in Banda Aceh, called for the deportation of the Rohingya while speaking at an earlier protest rally in the city on Wednesday, while another student, Della Masrida, 20, said, “They came here uninvited, they feel like Feels like it’s their country”, CNN reported.
A spokesperson for UNHCR Indonesia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s incident.
Earlier this month, UNCHR said the agency was “concerned” by reports of rejections in Indonesia.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, but it has a history of accepting refugees as they arrive.
According to CNN, the Rohingyas have left Myanmar, where they are generally considered “foreign infiltrators from South Asia”, denied citizenship and mistreated.
