Will Pekanbaru Become Indonesia’s Cox’s Bazar?

Picture: Refugee Camp, Pekanbaru, February 2025. Photo by an Anonymous Inhabitant

In an article by New Mandala, Nino Viartasiwi and Antje Missbach assert that despite a reluctant reception from locals and diminishing humanitarian support from international donors, there are indications at the beginning of 2025 that some Rohingya are in Indonesia for the long haul.

Between early 2003 and January 2025, 26 boats with about 3,342 Rohingya people fleeing either from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh or from Rakhine, Myanmar,  arrived in Indonesia, mainly in provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra. While most of them have continued their onward journeys to Malaysia, about 1,500 people remained in different temporary shelters in Indonesia at the time of writing. The sailing season is not over yet, and more boats could potentially arrive in the coming weeks and months, especially if the political situation in Myanmar deteriorates further.

While Aceh used to be a rather welcoming place for Rohingya refugees, from late 2023 onwards their disembarkations were met with strong rejection from the local population, causing some boats to remain offshore for several days or move on to other sites where local people were more welcoming. Many have wondered what might have caused the drastic shift from hospitality to hostilityand indeed many factors have contributed to this swift.

Hate speech and provocations that circulated mainly on social media since mid-2023 have undoubtedly stirred up xenophobia, and outright racism, towards Rohingya in some parts of Indonesia. Eventually hate speech translated into action on the ground: in late December 2023, hundreds of students were protesting in front of one of the holding sites in Banda Aceh, where the refuges were house in the basement. Because of the ferocity of the protests, the Rohingya refugees—most of them women and children—had to be evacuated to the immigration office for some hours before being returned to the very same site. As investigations by TEMPO magazine later showed, these students had not only been equipped with protests posters to use during the demonstrations but received payments and other incentives for their involvement.