Rohingya refugee’s plight in Indonesia highlights challenges, dilemmas in humanitarian response
- Rohingya refugees like Nur Azizah reach Indonesia after perilous boat journeys, but are unable to work and have to rely on support from international organisations
- Refugee funding has become a tricky issue, with Indonesia not obliged to help those arriving at its shores, and ‘solidarity fatigue’ from locals due to lack of official support
Amid the escalating tensions in Aceh, Indonesia, where misinformation is fuelling anger towards new waves of Rohingya refugees, the story of 22-year-old Nur Azizah provides much-needed perspective on the realities facing refugees living in the country.
Azizah has spent half of her life living in Indonesia as a refugee. Born in Kuala Lumpur to a Rohingya father and a Karen mother, she has never set foot on her parents’ homeland.
“My mother was 16 when she met my 25-year-old father. Both had to flee Myanmar due to the persecution against the Rohingya and other minority groups,” she said.
Azizah’s mother was a victim of human trafficking when she met her future husband.
“He had to buy her from her agent in order to free her from bondage,” Azizah said.
Though exiled from their country of birth, her parents had big dreams of a better life. Leaving Malaysia, they took Azizah, then 10, and her five-year-old brother, to board a rickety boat headed for Australia in 2011.
