JAKARTA: About 250 Rohingya refugees cram­med onto a wooden boat have been turned away from western Indonesia and sent back to sea, residents said on Friday.

The group from the persecuted Myanmar minority arrived off the coast of Aceh province on Thursday but locals told them not to land. Some refugees swam ashore and collapsed on the beach before being pushed back onto their overcrowded boat.

After it was prevented from landing, the decrepit boat travelled dozens of kilometres farther east to North Aceh. But locals again sent them back to sea late on Thursday.

By Friday, the vessel, which some on board said had sailed from Bangladesh about three weeks ago, was no longer visible from where it had landed in North Aceh, residents said.

Thousands from the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority risk their lives each year on long and treacherous sea journeys, often in flimsy boats, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.

“We’re fed up with their presence because when they arrived on land, sometimes many of them ran away. There are some kinds of agents that picked them up. It’s human trafficking,” Saiful Afwadi, a community leader in North Aceh, said on Friday.

Chris Lewa, director of Rohingya rights organisation the Arakan Project, said the villagers’ rejection seemed to be related to a lack of local government resources to accommodate the refugees and a feeling that people smugglers were using Indonesia as a transit point to Malaysia.

“It is sad and disappointing that the villagers’ anger is against the Rohingya boat people who are themselves victims of those smugglers and traffickers,” Lewa said on Friday.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023