A large crowd of Indonesian students has stormed a convention centre housing more than 100 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in the city of Banda Aceh, demanding they be deported.
Key points:
- 137 Rohingya were were led out of the refugee shelter and onto trucks as the protesters looked on
- The UNHCR said the attack was deeply disturbing and called for better protections
- It said online misinformation and hate speech fuelled the violence
Reuters footage from the Wednesday protest showed the students, many wearing green jackets, run into the building's large basement space, where crowds of Rohingya men, women and children were seated on the floor and crying in fear.
The Rohingya were then led out, some carrying their belongings in plastic sacks, and taken to trucks as the protesters looked on.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it in a statement it was "deeply disturbed to see a mob attack on a site sheltering vulnerable refugee families" and called for better protection.
"The mob broke a police cordon and forcibly put 137 refugees on two trucks, and moved them to another location in Banda Aceh. The incident has left refugees shocked and traumatised," it said.
Misinformation, hate speech blamed
It said the attack was the result of a coordinated online campaign of misinformation and hate speech.
A city police spokesperson in Banda Aceh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chris Lewa, the director of Rohingya human rights organisation The Arakan Project, said the rejection of Rohingya by some local people "had been very coordinated" through social media.
People who didn't want any more Rohingya refugees have been claiming that Indonesia has no obligation to assist or to take in Rohingya, Ms Lewa said.
"At the same time there has been a hate campaign being launched on social media all over, it's horrible comments against Rohingya, which never happened before," she told the ABC.
Rohingya refugees have experienced increasing hostility and rejection in Indonesia as locals grow frustrated at the number of boats carrying members of the ethnic minority, who face persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, arriving.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has blamed the recent surge in arrivals on human trafficking, and pledged to work with international organisations to offer temporary shelter.
Over 1,500 Rohingya have arrived in Indonesia since November, according to the UNHCR.
Arrivals tend to spike between November and April, when the seas are calmer, with Rohingya taking boats to neighbouring Thailand and Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia.
Wariza Anis Munandar is a 23-year-old student from Banda Aceh and called for the deportation of the Rohingya at a protest rally on Wednesday, while another student, 20-year-old Della Masrida, said "they came here uninvited, they feel like it is their country."
Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees but has a history of taking in refugees if they arrive.
For years, Rohingya have fled Myanmar, where they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse.
Reuters/ABC