MAY 18 (Reuters) — Local Indonesian authorities in Aceh said on Monday (May 18) that shelters for migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh, lack basic showering facilities.
Nearly 800 migrants came ashore in Aceh in Indonesia on Friday (May 15), taking the number that have made land in Indonesia and the northwest of Malaysia to more than 2,500 over the past week.
One local Indonesian government official said while they had enough food for the migrants, basic showering facilities were lacking.
“In term of food logistics, it’s still sufficient and prepared. What we are lacking now is bathing facilities and toiletries,” Yasir, like many Indonesians who go by one name, said to Reuters during his routine morning preparation at the soup kitchen.
Migrants could be seen using water from a bucket in order to keep themselves clean.
Some of the local residents also helped the government provide migrants with food at the make-shift shelter, which was a warehouse. A small kitchen was also made available for the migrants to cook their food.
One Rohingya migrant from Myanmar wanted to stay with his group.
“Indonesia is a Muslim country, Malaysia is a Muslim country as well, if all of those people like to be here, I’ll like to be here too and, if people like to be there, I’ll like to be there too,” said Abdul Rosyid.
Most of Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims are stateless and live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine state in the west of the predominantly Buddhist country. Almost 140,000 were displaced in clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.
Officials from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) were on site at the shelter to provide medical treatment and check the health of the migrants.
Thousands of people are adrift in the Andaman Sea after smugglers abandoned their vessels following a Thai crackdown on human trafficking. Many of the migrants are thirsty and sick.
The Thai clamp-down has made the preferred trafficking route through Thailand too risky for criminals preying on Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar and Bangladeshis seeking to escape poverty.
An estimated 25,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingya boarded smugglers’ boats in the first three months of this year, twice as many in the same period of 2014, the UNHCR has said.
The United Nations said the deadly pattern of migration by sea across the Bay of Bengal would continue unless Myanmar ended discrimination.
