Indonesia: We will help the refugees but we will not host them forever

Arakan News Agency
Indonesia is committed to improving its treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees, but not to host them forever, Indonesia’s Director-General for Immigration, General Ronnie Frankie Sumbe said.
“The global refugee crisis needs to be comprehensively addressed through participation in problem solving while safeguarding Indonesia’s national sovereignty and interests,” Sumbe said in a statement.
UNHCR data shows that there are about 14,000 refugees in Indonesia, but it is still small compared with 22 million refugees worldwide, or even hundreds of thousands hosted by Thailand and Malaysia.
Indonesia’s Aceh province hosts thousands of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, who arrived at intermittent intervals in 2015.
“The government is not obliged to fulfill the rights of the refugees and this hosting is a temporary process, and it will not be long in Indonesia,” said Deki Kumar, director of human rights at Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Sumbe and Deki rejected claims that the government of the world’s largest Muslim-majority country treats refugees as illegal immigrants. Although Indonesia had not ratified the Convention on Refugees and Asylum Seekers, they acted as if they had ratified it.