Survivors say police caused fatal capsizing
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Survivors of the worst disaster to hit Haitian migrants in years were “angry and revolted” as they accused a Turks and Caicos police vessel of ramming their crowded boat twice before it capsized, killing dozens in shark-infested waters, a senior official said Wednesday.
The allegation against the British territory’s police boat didn’t come out until Tuesday because the 78 survivors of the disaster have been locked in a jail-like detention center and barred from speaking to journalists.
Officials say about 160 migrants were jammed onto a rickety sailboat that capsized before dawn last Friday, spilling most of them into the Atlantic Ocean a half-mile off one of the islands in the Turks and Caicos, 125 miles north of Haiti.
“They’re very angry and revolted by what happened, because this is a problem that we still can’t clarify up until now,” Jeanne Bernard Pierre, director-general of Haiti’s National Migration Office, told the Associated Press from the Turks and Caicos, where she met with the detained survivors.
The Turks and Caicos government will not comment on the allegations until two investigations into the incident are completed, said Ben Boddy, an official with the governor’s office. Britain’s Foreign Office also declined to comment pending the investigations.
One investigation is being conducted by the local government, and three government experts from Britain are carrying out an independent investigation, said David Stewart, spokesman in London for the Marine Accident Investigation Branch.
Jean-Robert Lafortune, chairman of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition in Miami, said his group would meet today to discuss the tragedy and might call for the United Nations to investigate.
“We are very concerned that deliberate criminal action may have taken place in the rescue of the Haitian refugee boat,” he said.
Turks and Caicos Gov. Richard Tauwhare said Tuesday the sailboat capsized while it was being towed by a police boat in rough seas, contradicting earlier claims by local officials that police did not arrive on the scene until after the migrant boat capsized.