More than 180 Rohingya arrive in Indonesia – after a month at sea More than 180 Rohingya arrive in Indonesia – after a month at sea

A refugee boat carrying more than 180 members of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority has arrived in Indonesia. The wooden boat with 185 people on board landed on a beach in the western province of Aceh on Sunday afternoon, a police spokesman said. Among the refugees are 32 children and 70 women. Doctors took care of the people. An employee told the news agency that several refugees were suffering from dehydration.

It was initially unclear how long the wooden fishing boat had been with the fugitives. According to the BBC, the refugees left on November 25. After that, the boat sailed for weeks without an engine on the open sea. One refugee reported that the people on board had left a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.

This wooden ship is not the first to try to transport fleeing Rohingyas from camps in Bangladesh, according to the BBC. Another boat, also with about 180 people on board, sank in December.

United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR had previously reported that family members lost contact with a boat drifting in the Indian Ocean carrying about 180 Rohingya refugees from a camp in Bangladesh and feared the death of the people on board.

The rescued will be temporarily housed in state accommodations.

Thousands of the predominantly Muslim minority facing persecution in Myanmar make the risky crossing from Myanmar or the refugee camps in Bangladesh to reach Malaysia or Indonesia. In Myanmar, the Rohingya are persecuted and discriminated against.

(yam/sda/afp)