A large crowd of Indonesian students stormed a convention centre housing hundreds of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in the city of Banda Aceh on Wednesday, demanding they be deported, Reuters footage showed.
A city police spokesperson in Banda Aceh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Footage showed the students, many wearing green jackets, run into the building’s large basement space, where crowds of Rohingya men, women and children were seated on the floor and crying in fear.
The Rohingya were then led out by authorities, some carrying their belongings in plastic sacks, and taken to trucks to transport them to alternative shelter, as the protesters looked on.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has blamed the recent surge in arrivals on human trafficking, and has promised to work with international organisations to offer temporary shelter.
More than 1,500 Rohingya refugees have arrived on the shores of Aceh province since mid-November, in what the United Nations says is the biggest influx in eight years. Some of their boats have faced rejection by locals and in some cases have been returned to sea.
Arrivals tend to spike between November and April, when the seas are calmer, with Rohingya taking boats to neighbouring Thailand and Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia.
Wariza Anis Munandar, a 23-year-old student in Banda Aceh speaking at an earlier protest rally in the city on Wednesday called for the deportation of the Rohingya while another student, 20-year-old Della Masrida, said “they came here uninvited, they feel like it is their country.â€
Many Acehnese, who themselves have memories of decades of bloody conflict, are sympathetic to the plight of their fellow Muslims.
“We protested because we don’t agree with the Rohingyas who keep coming here,” said protester Khililullah.
A UNHCR Indonesia spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s incident.
UNCHR said earlier this month the agency was “alarmed†by the reports of rejection in Indonesia.
Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees but has a history of taking in refugees if they arrive.
For years, Rohingya have left Myanmar, where they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.
_____
SCMP
