Boats carrying more than 500 members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingya Muslim community washed ashore in western Indonesia yesterday, with some people in need of medical attention, officials and a nonprofit organization said. They warned that thousands more are believed to be stranded at sea.
Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission at the International Organization for Migration in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, said his teams were racing to the Aceh province sub-district of Seunuddon, where the boats landed.
Of the four boats found, three had apparently been abandoned by the smugglers and the other ran out of fuel, he said.
Most of those on the boats were Rohingya, but there were also some Bangladeshis on board, Hamilton said.
“We had nothing to eat,” said Rashid Ahmed, a 43-year-old Rohingya man who was on one of the boats. He said he left Myanmar’s troubled state of Rakhine with his eldest son three months ago.
“There were about 20 children on our boat — they were so hungry,” he said, crying as he spoke to The Associated Press by phone. “All we could do was pray.”
The Rohingya have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination
in Myanmar.