“I have instructed the police and the immigration to thoroughly investigate why they (the detainees) had acted that way,” he said in a statement.

Hamzah said all the 528 detainees who escaped were Rohingya nationals who were transferred from the Wawasan Langkawi camp after they were arrested for encroaching Malaysian waters in 2020.

He reiterated that Malaysia did not recognise their refugee status and their presence in the country was on humanitarian grounds.

Meanwhile, Suhakam commissioner Jerald Joseph told FMT that it would also send a team to the depot centre to probe the incident.

He said there was no point for the immigration department to detain the Rohingya indefinitely because they were stateless.

He urged the department to allow representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to see the detainees.

“The department needs to give access to the UNHCR to see if those detained are indeed Rohingya.

“If they are, then release them into the community with UNCHR cards, like the 150,000 Rohingya who are already in the country,” he said.

UNHCR confirmed with FMT that it has not received approval from the immigration department to access detention centres since August 2019.

Rohingya activist Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani expressed sadness over the ordeal faced by Rohingya in detention centres.

“When you stay in the depot for too long, and without access to the UNHCR, you become depressed and sick.

“The detainees have no access to the outside world. They don’t know what’s happening outside. They come here to seek a better life only to be locked up,” he told FMT.

Earlier, 528 Rohingya inmates fled the temporary immigration depot at Bandar Baharu, Kedah. A total of 351 inmates have been rounded up by police, while six were killed when they were crossing a highway.

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