As of May 2025, there are only around 2,600 Rohingya refugees in Indonesia. However, in the past few years, a few incidents indicate disharmony between them and locals.
In 2023, for example, there were efforts to forcibly remove them in Banda Aceh. Even in social media these days hostile comments from Indonesian accounts have made it to a number of platforms, including in the social media page of the Rohingya women collaborative network.
Noor Azizah, co-executive Rohingya women collaborative network, said that when she saw hateful comments about Rohingya refugees coming from the Indonesian, Malaysian and other communities, she would respond under the assumption that the other parties were under lack of information or under misinformation and would try to bring to conversation’s focus back to a humanity.
SBS Indonesian also spoke to Azharul Husna from the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of VIolence (Kontras) in Aceh and Annabella Arawanda from SUAKA about the interactions between locals and refugees and what motivated attacks and hate speech towards refugees.
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