Anti-Rohingya sentiment surging in Indonesia

Seeking refuge: Newly arrived Rohingya refugees resting after landing on the beach in Kuala Parek in East Aceh. A boat believed to be carrying more than 100 Rohingya refugees landed in Indonesia’s westernmost province last week, a UN official said, part of the biggest influx into the Muslim-majority country since 2015. — AFP

Arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid Bangladesh camps after weeks at sea late last year, hundreds of Rohingya refugees came to shore only to be turned around and pushed back.

The persecuted Myanmar minority were previously welcomed in the ultra-conservative Aceh province, with many locals sympathetic because of their own long history of war. But a wave of more than 1,500 refugees in recent months has been treated differently.