BANDA ACEH.., Indonesia (Reuters) -Indonesia will return to Bangladesh 114 Rohingya boat people who arrived earlier this year in rickety wooden boats, while the status of nearly 280 others is still being considered, officials said on Monday.
Two groups of Rohingyas, an oppressed Muslim minority from army-ruled Myanmar, washed up off Aceh province on Sumatra island in January and February, many in pitiful condition.
“We have verified the Rohingyas and 114 of them are Bangladeshis. They are willing to be returned to Bangladesh,” Mohamad Asruchin, director for Central and South Asia at Indonesia’s foreign ministry, told reporters in Banda Aceh.
Thousands of Rohingya now live in Bangladesh, having fled northwest Myanmar after decades of abuse and harassment.
Asruchin said some of the Rohingyas who had come from Myanmar were refusing to return.
Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said Dhaka would verify the identity of the Rohingyas from Bangladesh and the two governments were discussing who would foot the bill to fly them home.
Nearly 280 others were still undergoing a screening process by the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, said Faizasyah.
Myanmar and Bangladesh had agreed to take their citizens back, although Yangon had said it would only take Rohingyas with identification papers.
None of the Rohingyas arrived with any documents.
Indonesia had earlier said the boat people were economic migrants who should be deported, but after a public outcry later agreed that the UNHCR should verify the identity of the boat people, some of whom said they faced certain death if sent home.
Faizasyah said the UNHCR would seek a third country that was willing to accept them once a person was given refugee status because Indonesia had no policy of accepting refugees.
Rickety wooden boats crowded with hundreds of Rohingya have reached Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in recent months, the latest in annual migrations of people in search of better lives.
Their desperate plight was highlighted in January when hundreds were feared drowned after they were towed out to sea by the Thai military and abandoned in engine-less boats.
The Thai government has insisted the Rohingya were treated humanely and given ample supplies of food and water.
According to the UNHCR, 230,000 Rohingya live in Bangladesh.
(Additional reporting by Olivia Rondonuwu in Jakarta)(
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News Focus: around 114 Rohingya people of Bangladeshi nationality to be deported By Eliswan Azly
Jakarta (ANTARA News)..- Around 114 Rohingya boat people of Bangladeshi nationality will be deported from Aceh to their own country in a not too distance future.
Central and South Asian Affairs Director of the Foreign Ministry M Asruchin said after the meeting with the Aceh Governor in Banda Aceh on Monday that Indonesia would repatriate only 114 of the 391 Rohingya boat people who had been staying in Aceh since January 2009.
The 114 deportees were Rohingya people of Bangladeshi nationality. They would be repatriated to Bangladesh with their own approval, he said.
He added that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had conducted a verification of the Rohingya boat people who landed in Sabang and Idi Rayeuk, East Aceh district. Of the Rohingya boat people, 114 were Bangladeshi citizens.
According to Asruchin, the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) will take over the problem of the Rohingya boat people who refused to return to their country.
"If I am not mistaken the UNHCR is already there, and so the boat people will be declared as refugees. Usually, a third country prepared to accommodate them will be sought," he said.
In January 2009, 193 Rohingyas were rescued by the Indonesian navy after they sailed into Indonesian waters near Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island.
Indonesian authorities have refused to grant them asylum to any member of the first group, saying that they are economic migrants, not refugees fleeing persecution.
Thailand`s House committee on security said that international human traffickers were behind the massive influx of Rohingya boat people, who said that they were fleeing discrimination in Burma`s Arakan State.
A rising tide of Rohingya refugees has been fleeing Burma to the neighboring countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and India`s Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Their numbers usually increase after November, when the seas are at their calmest. Many seek to escape the economic hardship of their restricted lives and turn to brokers to find a better life in countries such as Malaysia and Thailand.
Earlier, the Australian Federation of Islamic Council (AFIC) hoped that the Indonesian government would not deport the Rohingya refugees because their life`s safety would be at stake.
AFIC President Ikebal Adam Patel in a letter to the Indonesian Embasy in Canberra, Australia, with a copy for Antara in February said that the organization urged the Indonesian government to accommodate the Rohingya refugees within an unlimited time and not to be to hastily deport them to Myanmar.
"We hope that the government can understand this and show their care to the problem confronting the Rohingya refugees who had been often intimidated, kidnapped, raped and persecuted by the Myanmarese military junta," Patel said.
However, Indonesia is expected not to repatriate the Rohingya refugees to the Myanmarese tyrannical military junta for fear of possible execution there.
A similar call was made by the Ukhuwah Jama`ah Muslimin (Hizbullah), a domestic Islamic organization which gave greater sympathy to the fate of the Muslim Rohingya refugees.
Dr Djoko Wiyono, the head of the Ukhuwah Jama`ah Muslimin (Hizbullah), said that the foreign affairs minister should not deport the Muslim Rohingya refugees and should not categorize them as economic migrants.
Wiyono also appealed to the government to form an independent fact-finding team to find the real reasons of the Rohingyas for fleeing Myanmar, their home country.
He called on the government and the Aceh provincial administration to give the refugees protection, clothes, food, medicines and other assistance especially for their children, women, and elders.
Deporting Rohingya asylum seekers who were stranded in Aceh Province recently will be perceived as an inhuman act by a country which fails to understand the problem confronting the Rohingya refugees.
As many as 391 Rohingya boat people are being accommodated in two places in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam after being found floating adrift in boats without an engine.
They were stranded in northern tip of Sumatra island in two batches. The first batch of 193 people was rescued on January 7, 2009 on Weh island, while the second batch with 198 boat people was found and rescused on February 3, 2009 in Idi Rayeuk, East Aceh.
In response to the previous call from many organizations, Asruchin said there was nothing to worry about the deportation of Rohingya boat people, because those who will be sent back to Bangladesh are only Rohingya of Bangladeshi nationals.
"So if they are repatriated to their Bangladesh, they will be safe there, as they are not under persecution or under intimidation in their country," he said.
Perhaps the Rohingya boat people from Myanmar should not be deported and the government has seriously been handling their fate with the UNHCR, Asruchin said.
The Muslim Rohingyas have been for generations denied of their Myanmarese citizenship and were reportedly being tortured and facing religious persecution and forced labor by the Myanmarese ruling junta.
However, the Rohingyas, totaling around 800,000 people in Myanmar are not recognized by the Myanmarese military junta regime as Myanmarese citizens, thus making them stateless. The military junta regime has brutally repressed them, and millions have risked their lives fleeing their country.
The Rohingyas, who are believed to be 7th century Arab settlers whose state was conquered by Burma in 1784, faced religious persecution because they were Muslims in a Buddhist majority country. The Human Rights Watch said in its latest annual report they faced forced relocation, land seizures, and denial of citizenship and identity papers.(*)
