DPA
Jakarta
More than 50 Bangladeshi migrants who were stranded in Indonesia’s Aceh province were repatriated to their home country yesterday, local television reported.
The migrants were among more than 1,700 Bangladeshis and members of the Rohingya ethnic group from Myanmar who were rescued from boats after they were abandoned by human traffickers off Aceh
in May.
They were flown from the Kuala Namu airport in the neighbouring province of North Sumatra, Metro TV
reported.
Afrizal, a local immigration official, told Metro that the remaining Bangladeshis would be deported once the paperwork was completed.
Television footage showed the Bangladeshis, dressed in blue shirts and wearing white Muslim skull caps, departing by bus to the airport.
Indonesian officials said Bangladeshis accounted for 40% of the boat people sheltered in Aceh and that they were economic migrants, unlike the Rohingya who were fleeing persecution in
Myanmar.
The cost for repatriating the Bangladeshis is borne by the International Organisation for Migration,
officials said.
Thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingya have been stranded on traffickers’ boats off the coasts of Thailand,
Malaysia and Indonesia.
Myanmar does not recognise the Rohingya as one of the country’s official ethnic groups and considers them illegal Bengali immigrants.
Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to give temporary shelter to the more than 7,000 migrants, conditional on international assistance in the longer term, after initially refusing to let them land.
