In its report for 2007, Amnesty International has blasted Malta’s ongoing automatic detention policy and referred to obstacles faced by men, women and children in accessing asylum procedures.
The leading human rights organisation singled out Malta, along with Greece, Italy and the UK, as “unlawfully detaining irregular migrants”, while denying others the necessary legal support and guidance with which to make heads or tails of their situation in a strange land.
Amnesty International also singled out Malta, Greece, Italy and Spain for having unlawfully expelled asylum seekers before their claims could be properly heard, and also said that some asylum seekers had been returned to countries where they were at risk of human rights violations – in Malta’s case to Sudan and Eritrea.
In its section on the Maltese situation last year, the human rights organisation referred to an instance in which asylum seekers who had fled the Sudan’s Darfur region, stricken as it is by a wide range of daily human rights atrocities, had their asylum applications refused by the Maltese authorities on the grounds that “they could have been moved to safer areas of the country”.
Malta’s automatic detention policy also came in for harsh criticism and was labelled a “clear violation of international human rights laws and standards”.
Under Maltese law, the maximum period of detention is 18 months for migrants, and 12 months for asylum seekers pending a decision on their application.
In its report, The State of the World’s Human Rights, Amnesty International notes how irregular migrants landing in or brought to Malta are automatically detained in closed detention centres for 18 months, after which they are transferred to open centres.
“Migrants were detained without first having a proper medical screening, potentially putting the health of other detainees and detention centre staff at risk,” the report notes.
The report also criticises the fact that journalists are still denied access to migrant detention centres.
The report refers to the visit in March last year of the EU Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, which visited four detention centres during their fact-finding mission to Malta.
Amnesty International recalled that four centres visited were in a deplorable condition and failed to meet legally binding international standards”. The Safi detention centre was described as being “like a cage”, having beds without sheets and broken and dirty mattresses, and no heating. Hygiene conditions, meanwhile, were described as “intolerable”, with broken showers, no hot water and toilets with broken doors and in a state of disrepair.
At the Hal Far centre, Amnesty recalled rat and mosquito “infestations” and “appalling conditions in bathrooms”. At Lyster Barracks, meanwhile, Amnesty highlighted the fact that two toilets were shared by over 100 people, that there was no provision of sanitary towels for women and no outdoors area for fresh air and exercise.
Amnesty also observed that overt racism had continued to increase over 2006, citing the European Network Against Racism’s report, which noted that the debate in the news media and the internet was “increasingly hostile toward immigrants and that racist attacks and hate speech were on the rise”.
The organisation also recalled arson attacks between March and May against journalists and NGOs that “actively worked to protect the human rights of migrants and refugees or denounced racist and discriminatory attitudes and actions in Maltese society”.
In its report, published yesterday, Amnesty referred to the arson attack on the homes of The Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia and MaltaToday editor Saviour Balzan, as well as the arson attacks on seven vehicles belonging to the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and one on a car belonging to a JRS lawyer.