JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities and fishermen rescued at least 69 Rohingya refugees on Thursday after their vessel capsized a day earlier in the waters off Aceh province.
The Search and Rescue Agency in Banda Aceh sent a ship to locate a capsized wooden boat on Wednesday evening following information from local fishermen who spotted the craft that morning.
The search-and-rescue team finally found the boat and survivors on Thursday morning, after initial difficulties locating the vessel in the choppy waters off the coast of Aceh.
“We managed to find the victims at 9 a.m., with the boat capsized and all of its passengers standing on top of the boat’s hull. And then we moved to evacuate the victims,” said Ibnu Harris Al-Hussain, head of Banda Aceh’s Search and Rescue Agency.
“We managed to find 69 people who are alive.”
The group comprises 42 men, 18 women and nine children, who have since been handed over to immigration officials.
It was unclear how many refugees were aboard the small craft when it capsized on Wednesday, but six survivors were initially rescued by local fishermen.
The mostly Muslim Rohingya, referred to by the UN as the “world’s most persecuted minority,” have faced decades of persecution in Myanmar. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh in 2017, following a brutal crackdown by the Myanmar military, which the UN said amounted to genocide.
Thousands have been trying to flee the squalid and overcrowded camps in Bangladesh to Southeast Asian countries, with Indonesia seeing a sharp rise in refugee numbers since November.
Indonesia has a history of taking in refugees on humanitarian grounds when they arrive on the country’s shores, despite not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. But the latest surge of Rohingya arrivals prompted a backlash on social media and some pushback from Acehnese people.
Last year, about 569 Rohingya — out of nearly 4,500 people — died or went missing trying to relocate to another country through deadly sea crossings, often on rickety boats, the highest figure in nine years.
Indonesian rescuers scramble to save Rohingya refugees from capsized boat
https://arab.news/wsnqj
Indonesian rescuers scramble to save Rohingya refugees from capsized boat
- Wooden vessel believed to have been carrying at least 75 Rohingya refugees
- Over 500 Rohingya died at sea in 2023, the highest figure in 9 years
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
