BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) — A wooden boat carrying dozens of Rohingya Muslims capsized about 16 miles from the coastline of Kuala Bubon beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh on Wednesday.
Local fishermen from Kuala Bubon rescued six of the refugees and evacuated them to a temporary shelter. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Last year, nearly 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them women and children — fled their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat, the United Nations refugee agency reported. 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 virtually impossible for the Rohingya because the military that attacked them overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021. And no country is offering the Rohingya any large-scale resettlement opportunities.
