(10 May 2015) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 2058541
Boats carrying more than 500 long-persecuted Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar landed in western Indonesia on Sunday, with some people needing medical care, officials and a non-profit organisation said.
Most of those on the boats were Rohingya, but there were also some Bangladeshis on board, according to the deputy chief of mission at the International Organisation for Migration in Jakarta.
The group converged on Lhokseumawe's Matang Puntung mosque in Aceh, where Rohingya and Bangladeshis were given food and shelter.
One man, called Muhammad Juned, told The Associated Press that approximately 500 Rohingya had spent two months at sea trying to reach Malaysia in a bid to find work.
The Rohingya have for decades suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination in Myanmar and are denied citizenship.
It's estimated another 7,000 to 8,000 people are still being held in large and small ships in the Malacca Strait and nearby international waters, according to the director of the Arakan Project, which has monitored the movements of Rohingya for more than a decade.
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