Fake news, online hate swell Indonesia anti-Rohingya sentiment

France 24
Issued on: 03/02/2024 

Jakarta (AFP) – Arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid Bangladesh camps after weeks at sea late last year, hundreds of Rohingya refugees came to shore only to be turned around and pushed back. 

In December, hundreds of people entered a government building in Banda Aceh hosting 137 Rohingya, kicking refugees' belongings and demanding they be deported © CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN / AFP/File 

 

The persecuted Myanmar minority were previously welcomed in the ultra-conservative Aceh province, with many locals sympathetic because of their own long history of war. But a wave of more than 1,500 refugees in recent months has been treated differently.

Rohingya safe zone plan is ‘fake news’: China, Myanmar

coconut yangon

By Coconuts Yangon Mar. 5, 2019

A Rohingya refugee carries a placard that says “We never return” at a protest against a disputed repatriation programme at the Unchiprang refugee camp near Teknaf on November 15, 2018. (Photo by Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP)

A UN-created “safe zone” for Rohingya refugees in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State, floated in recent weeks by Bangladesh’s foreign minister, appears nowhere near reality despite reports to the contrary in Bangladeshi media.

( 11.01.2018 ) 'Beyond comprehension': Myanmar admits killing Rohingya

Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation as the Myanmar army admitted for the first time that its soldiers murdered 10 Rohingya.

The remains of the victims in question were found buried in a mass grave outside Inn Din, a village in Maungdaw, Rakhine State, in December.