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.