A boat filled with eighty-one migrants from Myanmar’s Rohingya ethnic minority, mostly women and children has landed on an island off the Indonesian coast.
State media has reported that the boat docked in Indonesia’s Aceh province on Friday after a month-long journey.
The state run Antara news agency reported that the migrants set sail from Myanmar en route Malaysia but after being turned away by Malaysian authorities over concerns about COVID-19, they ended up stranded on Idaman island.
According to one of the migrants, nine out of the 90 people on board died during the journey.
“Because our boat leaked, Indian fishermen gave us this boat to continue our journey,” the migrant added.
A local village chief said the migrants’ new boat broke down and they brought the migrants ashore using rubber boats.
Earlier in September 2020, about 300 Rohingya landed in Aceh after months at sea.
According to the International Organization for Migration, IOM, some of the migrants had agreed to pay smugglers more than 2,000 dollars to take them to Malaysia.
UN investigators accused Myanmar’s military of carrying out mass killings and other atrocities against the Muslim minority with “genocidal intent” during a 2017 campaign that forced more than 730,000 across the border into Bangladesh.
dpa/NAN
