About 250 Rohingya Refugees in Indonesia Sent Back to Sea

 Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.jpg GETTY
Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.jpg GETTY
TT
20

About 250 Rohingya Refugees in Indonesia Sent Back to Sea

 Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.jpg GETTY
Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.jpg GETTY

About 250 Rohingya refugees in an overcrowded wooden boat have been turned away from western Indonesia and sent back to sea, residents said Friday.
The group from the persecuted Myanmar minority arrived off the coast of Aceh province on Thursday but angry locals told them not to land the boat. Some refugees then swam ashore and collapsed from exhaustion on the beach.
After they were forced back the decrepit boat traveled dozens of kilometers to the coast of North Aceh, where the refugees landed on a beach. But locals again sent them back to the boat and out to sea late Thursday.
By Friday, the vessel, which some on board said had sailed from Bangladesh about three weeks ago, was no longer visible from where it had landed on North Aceh's shores, residents said.
Thousands from the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority risk their lives each year on long and expensive sea journeys, often in flimsy boats, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia.
"We're fed up with their presence because when they arrived on land, sometimes many of them ran away. There are some kinds of agents that picked them up. It's human trafficking," Saiful Afwadi, a traditional community leader in North Aceh, told AFP on Friday.
Chris Lewa, director of Rohingya rights organization the Arakan Project, said the villagers' rejection seemed to be related to a lack of local government resources to accommodate the refugees and a feeling that they were being taken advantage of by people smugglers.
"Rohingya smugglers do indeed take advantage, using Indonesia as a transit to Malaysia. But, at the same time, no other country would let them in," Lewa told AFP on Friday.
"It is sad and disappointing that the villagers' anger is against the Rohingya boat people who are themselves victims of those smugglers and traffickers."
Lewa said she was trying to find out where the boat went after being turned away but "no one seems to know".
A 2020 investigation by AFP revealed a multimillion-dollar, constantly evolving people-smuggling operation, stretching from a massive refugee camp in Bangladesh to Indonesia and Malaysia, in which members of the stateless Rohingya community play a key role in trafficking their own people.
'No proper place'
Locals in neighboring Ulee Madon and Cot Trueng villages gave the refugees supplies, including food, clothing and gasoline, before turning their boat back to sea on Thursday, North Aceh's Afwadi said.
In an effort to encourage their departure, locals also repaired the boat after Rohingyas on board tried to sink it, he said.
Afwadi was among locals in boats who escorted the Rohingyas' vessel away from the shore, ensuring it left the area.
A village leader from Ulee Madon said residents did not have the resources to accommodate more refugees, adding that Rohingyas had disappeared from temporary shelters provided in the past.
"We don't have any proper place to house them. From experience, these people are unruly," Rahmat Kartolo told AFP late Thursday.
"It's not that we don't care about humanity, but these people sometimes run away."
Nearly 600 Rohingya refugees have reached western Indonesia this week, with 196 arriving on Tuesday and 147 on Wednesday.
UN refugee agency spokeswoman Mitra Salima Suryono told AFP many wanted to reunite with their families who are already in Malaysia, while others just sought protection.
"Many of them said it didn't matter where they were going. The most important thing for them is they will get safety, security, and livelihood," said Suryono.
More than 2,000 Rohingya are believed to have attempted the risky journey to Southeast Asian countries in 2022, according to the UN agency.
Nearly 200 Rohingya died or went missing last year while attempting hazardous sea crossings, it has estimated.



Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
TT
20

Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.