A number of migrants living in Malta have been interviewed by the British newspaper The Guardian, with Dr Ahmed Bugri, living in Malta, describing the abrupt end of the local migration crisis in 2015.

Dr Bugri told the British paper that when he arrived on the island 26 years ago, there were barely any black people on the islands.

He highlighted that the immigration crisis in Malta is a decade ahead of Europe, beginning in 2002 with fierce fighting in the Somali civil war and peaking in 2004, when Malta joined the EU. It ended, he said, “without explanation just as the main European crisis began in 2015”.

He told the Guardian that at its worst, boats were arriving carrying 400-500 asylum seekers, and that the Maltese government at the time didn’t know how to cope. “The government fed the migrants pasta Bolognese, which they threw away” The Maltese couldn’t understand it, he said, explaining that most of the migrants were Muslim and the meat was not halal.

He mentioned that the main problem in Malta now is not migration, but inclusion.

“What happens to the refugees who arrived during the crisis but have stayed here and not moved on to other countries? They are living on the periphery. In the next 10 years, you will see their poverty manifest itself on the street,” he told the Guardian

Read the full story in the Guardian here