MEULABOH, Indonesia – Dozens of Rohingya refugees are feared dead or missing after their boat capsized off Indonesia’s westernmost coast this week, the United Nations said on March 22, as local rescuers called off the search despite survivor accounts that many were swept away.

The mostly Muslim Rohingya are heavily persecuted in Myanmar, and thousands risk their lives each year on long and expensive sea journeys, often on flimsy boats, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.

Authorities staged a dramatic rescue of 69 Rohingya who had been adrift at sea for weeks before the boat and another trying to help them capsized a day earlier, with many found clinging to the hull of an overturned vessel.

Survivors told local authorities that as many as 151 refugees were onboard the boat.

“When we were on the sea, at that time, we feel like we will die, everyone will die,” survivor Rehena Begum, 33, told AFP through a translator at a shelter in Aceh, her voice trembling.

“There were many people dying. Many females, many children were dying in front of us.”

If those still missing are confirmed to have died, it would represent the biggest loss of life for the Rohingya at sea in 2024, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

“The fear is for those out of the 151, that haven’t been so far rescued, is that those lives have been lost or they have gone missing,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told AFP.

UNHCR Representative to Indonesia Ann Maymann pleaded “for the search efforts to continue in hope of finding survivors” in a post on X.

But local authorities nixed the search earlier on March 22 because there was no list of passengers.

“The search ended on Thursday. All Rohingya refugees on top of the boat yesterday have been rescued,” Mr Muhammad Fathur Rachman, an official from the search and rescue agency in Aceh, said through a spokesperson.

The group of 69 who were found off Aceh province on March 21, made up of 40 men, 18 women and 11 children.

Six others, including four women and two men, were rescued by fishermen a day earlier.

But rescuer Mr Rachman said there was “no additional information that we received about missing persons, and there is no manifest of the boat”.

“Our analysis is the boat cannot hold 150 people.”

A protection associate for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), Mr Faisal Rahman, told AFP that one of the survivors said “the boat took 151 people – once the boat capsized, approximately around 50 people (were) maybe missing and passed away”.

Ms Begum estimated there were more than 140 people on the boat and said many died because they were trapped inside a section of the boat with no exit.

“Many people passed away... there were two or three halls in the boat. In one hall there are many people and there is no access to go outside from that hall, so that’s why the people passed away,” she said.

The large room where the refugees were staying had been partitioned between men and women with no air conditioning or fans despite the heat, according to an AFP journalist.

Outside their room, the building was dusty with cracked tiles and rubbish strewn around.

Local police were identifying the refugees and some were receiving medical checks on March 22.

At least eight of the refugees were hospitalised on March 21 evening. The search and rescue agency said they were admitted for dehydration.

The others were taken to a temporary shelter at an old Red Cross building in a village near West Aceh district capital Meulaboh.

Survivors said they had travelled from Bangladesh, where many Rohingya have fled into squalid camps to escape persecution at home. Some said they were trying to reach Malaysia via Indonesia.

Many Rohingya make the perilous 4,000km journey from Bangladesh to Malaysia, fuelling a multimillion-dollar human-smuggling operation that often involves stopovers in Indonesia.

At the temporary shelter, many of the refugees were eating food cooked by local residents, who also gave them used clothes.

Some were sleeping on a tarpaulin sheet on the floor, using sarongs as blankets.

At dawn, refugees were taking part in morning prayer, using donated Qurans.

But some local residents protested against their arrival, unfurling a banner that said they rejected the Rohingya being there.

Some Rohingya boats landing in Aceh in recent months have been pushed back out to sea as sentiment towards the minority group shifts in the ultra-conservative Indonesian province.

Many Acehnese, who themselves have memories of decades of bloody conflict, are sympathetic to the plight of their fellow Muslims.

But others say their patience has been tested, claiming the Rohingya consume scarce resources.

From mid-November 2023 to late January, 1,752 refugees, mostly women and children, landed in the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, according to the UNHCR.

The UN agency said it was the biggest influx into the Muslim-majority country since 2015. AFP