According to the Royal Montserrat Police Force (RMPF) Ag. Commissioner of Police, Paul Morris the missing six Sri Lankans who went missing from Montserrat after two and a half years seeking asylum in Montserrat, are believed to be in St. Thomas, USVI.
In a ZJB news broadcast featuring an interview with the Ag. Commissioner, he reported that communication between them and the authorities in St. Thomas recently regarding the identity of of six persons who arrived in there, it is believed those persons could be the Sri Lankans who disappeared from Montserrat and missing since July 3.
Morris said that they have had contact with the authorities in St. Thomas. “They have enquired about a number of people they have detained in St. Thomas. We are trying to confirm with them that they are the people that were reported missing form Montserrat a couple (some) weeks ago; and while it is not fully confirmed at this moment it is every likely hood that it is those that were involved in the disappearance from Montserrat,” he told ZJB news.
He gave the probability of how the police believed the Sri Lankans left Montserrat as he countered The Montserrat Reporter’s (TMR) sources who said they departed from Little Bay. “The high profanities are they got on a boat in one of the areas in our exclusion zone and they made their way to St. Thomas,” he said adding that they did so, “probably with the intention to move on to the US.”
Sources have told TMR that the issue surrounding the Sri Lankans’ sojourn to and from Montserrat is one that leaves international matters on relations unresolved. One that still has to be cleared since it was never certain how to deal with the Sri Lankans.
The RMPF Ag. Commissioner hinted at the problem. “…when somebody goes missing we cannot discount any possibility…while it was always a high likely hood that they left town voluntarily, we couldn’t we couldn’t close the case because, we haven’t got confirmation.
There remains 8 Sri Lankans. 14 of them had arrived in Montserrat in December 2007 along with 33 other passengers found at Old Road Bay. They had refused to leave the island while they claimed refugee status, being Tamils fleeing for fear of persecution in their homeland.
