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Rohingya refugees after their arrival on the beach in Indonesia
Photo: Zik Maulana / dpa
After months at sea, dozen of the Rohingya Muslim minority from Myanmar have landed in Indonesia.
The 81 members of the ethnic group persecuted in their homeland reached the Aceh region in Sumatra on Friday, the state news agency Antara reported.
Among them are 49 women and 11 children.
One of the refugees said that 90 people were originally on board, but 9 died while trying to escape.
Actually Malaysia was the destination of the trip.
However, the authorities there did not allow the group to land for fear of possible corona infections, it said.
When their own boat leaked, Indian fishermen gave the Rohingya a boat to continue their journey.
It was not until September that more than 300 Rohingya landed in Sumatra, also after months at sea.
They too had previously been rejected by various countries.
More than 30 members of the group had died on the way.
In Myanmar, the Rohingya have been persecuted and discriminated against for decades; many lost their citizenship through a law passed in 1982 and are stateless.
Hundreds of thousands of them have fled Myanmar - many across the border into Bangladesh.
Most of the densely populated camps there live in precarious conditions.
The UN describes the persecution of the minority as genocide.
mrc / dpa