The rioting at the detention camps is not an indication of how ungrateful African immigrants are for Maltese hospitality and the warm welcome of an island in the sun, but of how desperate they are in the prevailing conditions. They are, effectively, imprisoned without trial, without hope and without distraction, and they are under the most terrible levels of stress not only because of their present, but more particularly because of their immediate past and their long-term future.
A United States of America State Department report on human rights practices in Malta puts our handling and treatment of asylum seekers who had come over from North Africa as Malta’s “most serious human rights problem”. It draws attention to the way they are housed in detention and how nothing is done to help migrants integrate into Maltese society. “Overcrowding persisted at the country’s largest migrant open housing centre in Marsa. Friable asbestos was present in one of the common areas; however, a process was underway to remove all asbestos by March 2014,” the report says. That’s this month. It is beyond shocking that human beings are being kept in places where there is plenty of friable asbestos, when it has long been known that this is highly carcinogenic and its use is banned in buildings.
The slum-like conditions in which the asylum-seekers are detained are further highlighted in terms of inadequate ventilation, high heat in the summer and cold in the winter.
Volunteers who help asylum-seekers by collecting blankets, clothing and shoes have their own unofficial reports of flip-flops worn on cold, wet days because there are no other shoes, pairs of shoes shared between two or more people, and individuals sleeping without sheets or blankets in the winter. There is no system by which incomers are given standard-issue clothing, towels, blankets and basic necessities, leaving them dependent on hand-outs from charitable donations. But the difficulty there is that there is no organised system for the storage and distribution of donations either, and so it tends to be random. What is clearly required, and has been for years, is a warehouse with organised storage and shelving and a proper storekeeper, so that bedding, clothing, shoes and other essentials can be released adequately as and when required. The ad hoc way in which asylum seekers now get what they need, and sometimes don’t get it at all, is a major contributory factor to high stress levels.
The Home Affairs Ministry announced that it has commissioned a board of inquiry to investigate events at the Lyster Barracks detention camp last Tuesday. Then it turned out that the board of inquiry is not independent at all, because all its members are quite literally employees of that same Home Affairs Ministry: the director-general of development and policy implementation, the deputy head of the Civil Protection Department, the assistant director of prisons, and another individual. This hardly inspires confidence in their impartiality. They would make for an appropriate internal board of inquiry, but what is required here is an independent inquiry over and above that. The interesting thing is that the previous government invariably commissioned an independent board of inquiry into such incidents, led as I recall by Martin Scicluna. Mr Scicluna would probably not have had difficulty accepting any such brief from this government, given that he told us we should vote for it, yet he was not asked to lead an inquiry.
The Home Affairs Ministry, with its now near-mythical indifference to how things should be done, continues to insist that its board of inquiry is independent and constituted in line with the law. “It is made up of people who are competent to serve in this capacity,” a statement said. But their competence is not the issue here. Their independence is, and they can’t be considered independent from their employer, from the hand that dishes out their pay-cheque at the end of the month.
These problems continue to occur year after year and it seems to me that while inquiries are essential, the root cause remains unchanged and as long as there is nothing done about that, riots and beatings will continue to happen. People confined for a long time in abysmal conditions under great stress, after having endured unbelievable hardship, in distress about what is to become of them and about what has become of their families, will either sink into depression or break out into anger and rebellion. Stir into the mix a liberal dose of xenophobia, racism and soldiers with the attitude of Mississippi rednecks circa 1950, and you have a recipe for trouble that no number of inquiries, independent or otherwise, is going to solve.
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