Sixty-nine Rohingya refugees were rescued at sea on Thursday, March 21, after their boat sank the day before off the Aceh region, in Indonesia, noted a journalist from Agence France-Presse (AFP), on board the rescue ship.
The refugees, men, women and children, were found clinging to the hull of an overturned boat, about 30 kilometers from the coast. Six of them were rescued on Wednesday by fishermen, but one survivor estimated that around 150 people were on board.
Asked by AFP, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has not yet reacted.
Since November, hundreds of members of this Muslim minority persecuted in Burma have fled their camps in Bangladesh to reach the province of Aceh, at the western tip of Indonesia, by sea, on makeshift boats.
Thousands of Rohingya risk their lives every year in perilous and costly sea crossings to try to reach Indonesia or Malaysia. Since mid-November, more than 1,700 of them have arrived in Indonesia, the largest movement of Rohingya migration to the archipelago since 2015, according to the United Nations.
