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Indonesia jails 14 Rohingya asylum seekers for deadly brawl

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Myanmar Rohingya Muslims shout slogans in court's detention house in Medan, North Sumatra. They were sentenced to nine months in prison over the fatal attack of Myanmar Buddhists at a detention centre in the country. Photo: AFP

An Indonesian court sentenced 14 Rohingya asylum seekers from Myanmar to nine months in jail for their role in a deadly brawl at an detention centre that left eight Buddhist fishermen from their country dead, prosecutors and lawyers said on Thursday.

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The melee occurred eight months ago in North Sumatra province, where more than 100 ethnic Rohingya Muslim asylum seekers – most intercepted off Indonesia’s coast after fleeing Myanmar in rickety boats – and 11 fishermen accused of illegal fishing were being housed together.

Eight fishermen were killed and 15 Rohingya were injured.

The three-judge panel at the Medan District Court on Wednesday found Sokhat Ali and 13 other men guilty of collective assault resulting in the loss of lives. The sentence was lighter than the two-year imprisonment sought by prosecutors, who planned to appeal.

Police and the detention centre chief said that the clash began after a Rohingya Muslim cleric and a fisherman got into a heated debate about sectarian violence that had erupted a few weeks earlier in central Myanmar.

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However, prosecutors told the court that the Rohingya were angered when a female asylum seeker was sexually harassed by the fishermen.

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