At least 76 Rohingya asylum seekers have come ashore in Indonesia’s Aceh province, local officials said yesterday, a reminder of the humanitarian emergency that continues to unfold on the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
According to report by the Associated Press, which quoted local police chief Nova Suryandaru, a small wooden boat carrying “more than 100” people, most of them women and children, ran aground in Pereulak region in East Aceh on Wednesday.
The landing came after the boat’s engine broke down close to shore, which Nova said he suspected may have been the result of sabotage by illegal traffickers so that the refugees would not be pushed back out to sea. He said that the vessel had set off from the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh with the intention of reaching Malaysia.
In a separate report, Reuters put the number on the boat at “more than 70,” including 40 men, 32 women, and four children. Nova added that authorities were collecting information about the identities of those aboard, who had been sent to temporary shelters.
The boat’s arrival is a reminder of the humanitarian crisis that persists in southeastern Bangladesh, where around 1 million Rohingya dwell in sprawling refugee camps. The majority have been there since the Myanmar military launched a violent expulsion campaign in northern Rakhine State in August 2017, which killed at least 6,700 people, razed dozens of villages, and drove an estimated 740,000 people across the border into Bangladesh.
While boats have been issuing forth from Bangladesh and Rakhine State in Myanmar for more than a decade, the numbers have increased markedly since 2017. Most are seeking sanctuary in other parts of Southeast Asia, particularly in Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia, despite facing an increasingly hostile reception in both nations.
Faced with a wave of arrivals, the Indonesian government has pledged to crack down on the people smugglers who facilitate the perilous ocean voyages from Bangladesh and Myanmar. The fact that these traffickers may have deliberately sabotaged their own vessel’s engines in order to prevent it from being turned away seems to represent a response to these efforts.
The number of people willing to undertake these dangerous ocean voyages has increased steadily since the military coup in February 2021. According to data from the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, more than 7,800 Rohingya attempted to flee Bangladesh by sea in 2024 – an 80 percent increase compared to 2023, when nearly 4,500 Rohingya made the attempt. In 2021, only around 700 people attempted to escape Bangladesh and Myanmar by sea. Last year, more than 650 people died or were reported missing en route, making it “one of the world’s most perilous journeys.”
This alarming upward trend seems set to continue in 2025. On January 8, UNHCR reported that a total of 460 men, women, and children had so far arrived by boat in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, including more than 260 weak and hungry refugees, mostly women and children, who landed at Aceh’s Pereulak village on January 5.
As the International Crisis Group wrote in a report in November 2023, the rising numbers can be explained by a number of factors. One is the resumption of civil war in Rakhine State over the past few years, which has complicated the goal of voluntarily repatriating Rohingya from Bangladesh. At the same time, international agencies have been forced to slash their assistance to the camps in Cox’s Bazar, where crime is now rampant, and where the Bangladeshi authorities, fearing the refugees becoming a permanent presence in their country, have allowed them few opportunities for employment or education.
Facing such conditions it should come as no surprise that increasing numbers of people would rather roll the dice on an ocean escape than remain in the limbo of the camps.
