EULABOH, Indonesia (AP) — A search and rescue vessel in Indonesia discovered a capsized wooden boat on Thursday, which had been transporting dozens of Rohingya Muslim refugees.
The vessel began rescuing survivors, some of whom had been standing on its hull.
An AP photographer aboard the rescue vessel reported that 10 individuals had been taken aboard local fishing boats, while another 59 were being rescued by the Indonesian craft.
Men, women, and children, weakened and soaked from the night’s rain, cried as the rescue operation commenced, with people being taken aboard a rubber dinghy to the rescue vessel.
The precise number of refugees aboard the small craft when it capsized off Indonesia’s northernmost coast on Wednesday was unclear.
Six survivors, initially rescued by local fishermen, estimated between 60 and 100 people. It remained uncertain whether all managed to cling to the capsized craft overnight or if some had drowned.
Indonesia’s search and rescue team departed Banda Aceh city in the evening on Wednesday, many hours after the capsizing, and initially struggled to locate the boat in the choppy waters off the coast.
They eventually found the boat and the survivors around midday on Thursday.
Amiruddin, a tribal fishing community leader in Aceh Barat district, stated that those rescued indicated that the boat was sailing east when it started leaking, and strong currents pushed it toward the west of Aceh.
The six survivors mentioned that others were still attempting to survive on the capsized craft.
Approximately 740,000 Rohingya were resettled in Bangladesh to escape the brutal counterinsurgency campaign by security forces in their homeland of Myanmar.
Thousands have been trying to flee overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to neighboring countries, with Indonesia experiencing a surge in refugee numbers since November, leading it to seek help from the international community. Rohingya arriving in Aceh encounter hostility from some fellow Muslims.
Indonesia, like Thailand and Malaysia, is not a signatory to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention outlining legal protections for refugees, and therefore is not obligated to accept them. However, Indonesia has provided temporary shelter to refugees in distress.
Last year, nearly 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of whom were women and children — fled Myanmar and the refugee camps in Bangladesh by boat, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Of those, 569 died or went missing while crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the highest death toll since 2014.
Returning safely to Myanmar is nearly impossible because the military that attacked them overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021. No country has offered them any large-scale resettlement opportunities.