Hundreds of students in the province of Aceh, western Indonesia, invaded a shelter on December 27 that temporarily housed more than a hundred Rohingya refugees, driving them out in what is but the latest incident due to local hostility towards the refugees, who belong to a persecuted stateless Muslim minority from Myanmar.
Since mid-November, more than 1,500 Rohingya fled refugee camps in Bangladesh to reach Aceh province by sea in makeshift crafts. According to the United Nations, this is the largest migration of Rohingya to Indonesia since 2015.
Under the slogan “Aceh’s Students Denied Access to the Rohingyas”, hundreds of people demanded that these asylum seekers leave from their temporary shelter in the Balee Meuseuraya building and be relocated elsewhere.
Even though most of vulnerable refugees are families, especially women and children, the students dragged them into vans and pickups and drove them to another place not far away, about a kilometre from the previous location.
About 135 Rohingya, who landed on an Aceh beach on 10 December, were subjected of this action, after.
“We were able to move these Rohingya as most of our compatriots in Aceh have already expressed concern and were against their presence here,” said one of the coordinators of Wednesday’s action.