Will Pekanbaru become Indonesia’s Cox’s Bazar?

Between early 2003 and January 2025, 26 boats with about 3,342 Rohingya people fleeing either from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh or from Rakhine, Myanmar,  arrived in Indonesia, mainly in provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra. While most of them have continued their onward journeys to Malaysia, about 1,500 people remained in different temporary shelters in Indonesia at the time of writing. The sailing season is not over yet, and more boats could potentially arrive in the coming weeks and months, especially if the political situation in Myanmar deteriorates further.

While Aceh used to be a rather welcoming place for Rohingya refugees, from late 2023 onwards their disembarkations were met with strong rejection from the local population, causing some boats to remain offshore for several days or move on to other sites where local people were more welcoming. Many have wondered what might have caused the drastic shift from hospitality to hostility and indeed many factors have contributed to this swift.

Hate speech and provocations that circulated mainly on social media since mid-2023 have undoubtedly stirred up xenophobia, and outright racism, towards Rohingya in some parts of Indonesia. Eventually hate speech translated into action on the ground: in late December 2023, hundreds of students were protesting in front of one of the holding sites in Banda Aceh, where the refuges were house in the basement. Because of the ferocity of the protests, the Rohingya refugees—most of them women and children—had to be evacuated to the immigration office for some hours before being returned to the very same site. As investigations by TEMPO magazine later showed, these students had not only been equipped with protests posters to use during the demonstrations but received payments and other incentives for their involvement.

According to TEMPO’s reports, these anti-Rohingya resentments were meant to discredit Anies Baswedan, one of the candidates in the presidential election held in February 2024. However, the protests did not wane in the aftermath of the elections. The hate speech and the online provocations had fallen on fertile ground. Throughout 2024, several people claiming to be local residents were seen waiting at the designated shelter to protest against the temporary reception of Rohingya. Both online and on-the-ground campaigns saw the defamation of the UNHCR and other local and international NGOs and prominent individuals, such as head of the  Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama Aceh, an official council of Islamic leaders. The fact that some Rohingya absconded from the camp were used by the media to portray them as ungrateful, which strengthened the stigmatisation of Rohingya further.

Several attempts to calm down the situation, including by Muzzakir Manaf, Aceh’s recently-elected governor, and also by Malik Mahmud, the Wali Nanggroe (a customary leader,  who reminded the Acehnese people of the humanitarian need but also the international duties to protect the Rohingya for the time being), were only minimally successful. Like tens of thousands of other Acehnese, Governor Muzzakir had sought refuge in Malaysia during the Aceh conflict (1976–2005).

Further rejections of Rohingya happened onshore and also at the initial reception sites. In November 2024,152 Rohingya who were held in South Aceh district were loaded onto trucks and driven all the way to the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, where they were rejected. Then, in a journey back down the east coast that lasted 48 hours and did not include a single toilet break or meal, they were returned to Lhokseumawe and eventually back to South Aceh, where they were sheltered for another month. In other cases, local people were only prepared to receive the Rohingya after the UNHCR and IOM managed to convince them of the economic benefits to the wider local community. For example, at the end of Ramadan, IOM donated a cow to the village in addition to a cow for the refugees.

The more regular, and therefore more significant, benefits offered to villages that are open to hosting refugees include the renting of land for where the camp is erected from local owners, catering and security services; costs are usually born by either UNHCR or IOM. For example, it is very common that the official village-owned enterprise corporation (BUMDes) is tasked to cook three meals a day for an overall payment of Rp 45,000 (A$4.30) per person, for which they charge a fee of up to 15%. But additional charges for distribution and others task, reaching in some instances 20%, also apply, which has negative consequences for the nutrition of refugees. Locals are also hired as security guards and deployed at the camps, earning Rp100,000 (A$9.75) per shift. This is equal the daily salary of a blue-collar worker, but these jobs require less effort than most blue-collar work, as guards’ main task is to mediate between the refugees and the local community.

The local economy is also stimulated, as new kiosks pop up around the camps to cater for the refugees and to casual visitors who come to see the Rohingya. Individual villagers also act as intermediaries for receiving remittances from the relative of the Rohingya for which they are being paid a commission. Rohingya need the money for their daily expenses but also to move on from Aceh. Those who are caught being involved in such transactions or the facilitations of onward travel can face people smuggling allegations.

While in the past, Malaysia—where there is a community of 120,000 registered Rohingya residing already—was the most desired destination, lately many Rohingya have also moved on the Pekanbaru, in Riau province. One of the key pull factors are the cash allowances Rohingya receive from the IOM—Rp1,050,000 (A$102) for adults and Rp500,000 (A$49) for minors—instead of the catered meals and earlier on also the better quality accommodation provided in proper dormitories.

However, in January 2025 the IOM had to stop the funding for these dormitories and moved all the Rohingya to an empty site, where the Rohingya have now erected self-built tents and barracks. In February 2025, IOM also had to end medical care for the Rohingya, as part of their funding was coming from the United States (in addition to the EU), whose aid program has seen drastic cuts after the re-election of Donald Trump.

The latest treatment of the Rohingya is a clear setback for how refugees have been handled in Indonesia in the past. While in other cities, refugee children are allowed to attend school and vocational training, Rohingya children are not. According to some Rohingya who have recently moved to Pekanbaru and whom we contacted in February 2025, the conditions there are worse than in the shelters in Aceh. In fact, some we spoke to said they have noticed a resemblance of the new camp to their previous shelters in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, were many have spent up to 8 years since the mass exodus from Myanmar in 2017.

Despite the substandard conditions, the new camp site in Pekanbaru has quickly filled up. As of February 2025, there were more than 600 camp inhabitants. While the overall situation in Pekanbaru is dire due to overcrowding and extremely poor hygiene, this will not necessarily deter future arrivals. The increase in violence, abduction and forced conscription in Cox’s Bazar—and the intensifying armed conflict in Rakhine—remain the main push factors for Rohingya to leave by boat and seek safety in neighbouring South(east) Asia. In light of the frequent pushbacks conducted by India, Thailand and Malaysia, Indonesia remains their only hope.

The necessity to move to safer places has also created many new infrastructures for human smuggling across the Andaman Sea, within Indonesia, and between Indonesia and Malaysia that show strong exploitative features, for example in marriage arrangements for young Rohingya women. In particular, if the Rohingya have to borrow money from others, they may face heightened risk of abuse in the future when they have to repay their debts. It is safe to assume that criminal activities in the camp may increase, if the current hands-off approach continues.

While Indonesia’s Presidential Regulation No 125 of 2016 Concerning the handling of foreign refugees allows the use of the state budget for covering the care needs of refugees, the technical regulations on how to exactly do so have yet to be issued. The revision and the refinement of the Presidential Regulation is overdue and needs to be tackled by the new Indonesian government under President Prabowo Subianto without any further delay.

It is fair to note that neither Aceh—the poorest province in Sumatra—nor Riau Province may have the resources to cover the upkeep of refugees in the long run. The current uncertainty over the treatment of Rohingya results from the central government’s preference for a hands-off approach, that leaves the caretaking entirely to IOM and UNHCR. Considering the recent funding cuts for these international organisations, the quality of care is receding, raising concerns about the sustainability of the current protection system. (In 2024, for instance, UNHCR received US$2.49 billion in funding from the United States, amounting to a fifth of the agency’s total budget—funds now suspended as part of the Trump administration’s suspension of the US foreign aid program.)

It is highly unlikely that other international donors will make up for the current funding losses to the IOM and the UNHCR in the foreseeable months, not least as the global attention is still focusing on the crises in Gaza and Ukraine. It is also highly unlikely that resettlements to safe third countries will increase any time soon: in fact, as of 20 January 2025 Donald Trump once again put resettlements to the United States on hold, except for refugees from South Africa of European descent.

The only way to prevent the creation of financially unsustainable refugee camps in Indonesia, which could potentially evolve into hubs for smuggling and trafficking, is to allow the refugees a self-sustained form of living after an initial emergency phase. Rohingya, like most other refugees, are talented and entrepreneurial people.

Despite limited resources, they are able to carve out a living if allowed to do so. Some Rohingya raise ducks in the camps in Aceh, others go fishing or assist local farmers in the rice fields. To date, they risk punishment and possibly undetermined arrest in detention centres for receiving remunerations. Given that the overall numbers of refugees (fewer than 13,000) in Indonesia remain much lower than in Thailand and Malaysia, the potential for competition over jobs with locals is negligible. The right to earn a living for refugees in Indonesia serves as a viable and pragmatic option, enabling them to attain self-sufficiency amid a diminishing refugee protection framework.

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