THE Human Rights Commission Malaysia (Suhakam) will send a team to the Sg Bakap Immigration Depot near Bandar Baharu, Kedah, to investigate what had actually happened with the detainees there.

“We will send a team there in the near future to investigate the incident,” Suhakam commissioner Jerald Joseph told The Malaysian Insight.

He also said that the team would also look into the conditions under which the detainees were held at the depot.

In the early hours of yesterday morning, 528 Rohingya detainees escaped from the detention centre, six of whom were killed when attempting to cross the North-South Expressway at Km168 southbound near Jawi, Nibong Tebal.

The centre was a former national service training camp and had been repurposed as a centre to hold refugees with Covid-19.

Police managed to apprehend most of the escapees but the search – alongside the Immigration Department and Rela – continues for the rest.

There are unconfirmed reports that the protests, or riots, as the authorities called them, and the subsequent escape was triggered by the death of a fellow Rohingya detainee who had not been given adequate medical treatment when he was ill.

Jerald however said Suhakam has no information as to why the detainees had rioted.

“We (Suhakam) have not heard of detainees not being given medical treatment while sick.

“Usually they would be taken to the medical officers stationed there,” he said.

He also said it is pointless for the authorities to hold these detainees indefinitely if there are no plans to repatriate them.

Jerald urged the Immigration Department to allow representatives of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to meet the detainees.

“The Immigration Department needs to give access to the UNHCR to see if they are really ethnic Rohingya.

“If so, release them with UNHCR cards, like the 150,000 Rohingya ethnics who are already here,” he said.

As of this morning, a total of 130 detainees, namely 99 adult men, 21 adult women, five boys and five girls have not been found.

The re-arrested detainees have been transferred to four separate depots in Selangor, Perak and Malacca.

Meanwhile, immigration director-general Khairul Dzaimee Daud said a death was reported in the temporary detention depot before the riot.

“The death was due to common illness, it had nothing to do with the riot, and we are still investigating the case,” he said. – April 21, 2022.