Following the incidents at Safi this week and in the wake of numerous, similar reactions from first-hand stakeholders, action to address the conditions in which we keep those who ask us for protection is urgently required.

One particular form of action that needs to be taken without further delay is allowing the press regular access to detention centres so that it can see, with its own eyes and not through government press releases, what the situation really is.

As a newspaper, we would be more than willing to work with the authorities in question in organising such access in a regular way – and not mere one-off visits when European Parliamentarians pay fact-finding visits.

This request has been made before, and it has not been granted. But that was then and this is now, and now there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever to deny the press what it has been requesting, not for headlines but out of its responsibility to the public.

This is no overreaction based on the complaints of a few “hardcore” detainees, as they have been described, protesting this week but it is, rather, based on the post-protest reactions from NGOs, from the people on the ground with the detainees, who experience the frustration of long detention periods first-hand and who know of the squalid conditions that these people are made to live in far from the prying public eye.

We are told by the authorities that matters have improved significantly within the detention centres. This, however, simply does not match up with what we have been told by NGOs, through numerous public statements made this week.

We make this request in solidarity with both the detainees and their warders - if conditions are made more liveable, the situation will be rendered more liveable by those on both sides of the bars.

And we make this request for regular access in the interest of transparency and, in the interest of transparency we see no reason for it to be denied.

The fact of the matter is that Malta simply cannot morally afford to retain its automatic detention policy, and at the same time place those people, who have committed no crime but to seek international protection, in what is reported to be virtual squalor and out of sight to be all but forgotten by most of society.

Any irregular migrant landing in Malta is automatically detained for a maximum 12-month period or until they claim for asylum is heard and decided upon. An asylum seeker is released from detention if their claim for asylum is still pending after a year. If the answer to the claim is in the negative and if their subsequent appeal is turned down, the period if detention is automatically extended to 18 months, which is what the source of this week’s protest was.

Despite drawbacks from the humanitarian perspective, this policy had served Malta well. It had served as a deterrent at the height of the migratory phenomenon.

But if Malta is to retain its automatic detention policy, highly controversial from a human rights perspective, what it can do is to perhaps make life inside those detention centres, centres for asylum seekers and not criminals, more liveable.

But by all reports, we have been failing in that endeavour.

Aditus chairman and former head of the UNHCR’s Malta office Neil Falzon pointed out this week that, “The Detention Services officers are called to implement a strict detention policy that insists on locking up people in filthy, crammed and suffocating spaces. Malta has repeatedly been told that the physical conditions in Safi centre are simply unacceptable, and that an arbitrary 18-month long detention without any real possibility of legal challenge is an affront to human dignity."

The UNHCR told the press this week that it was “not entirely surprising” that migrants detained at the Safi centre protested in the way they did this week, while still condemning the incident.

“Frustration is increasing as several hundred asylum seekers are held behind bars in poor conditions,” a UNHCR spokesman told the press this week, adding that the government’s priority should be to address the conditions at the centre and ensure more acceptable standards, the UNHCR said. Much, it said, could be done to improve the situation even without major investments.

Jesuit Refugee Service, meanwhile, highlighted the conditions at the “inadequate” and “overcrowded” detention centre and that detainees complained of lacking basic necessities like soap and toothpaste.

“Long-term detention is a soul-destroying and psychologically demolishing experience. It also raises serious human rights concerns. The need to search for alternatives cannot be sufficiently stressed,” the JRS said.

Both the government and the opposition, however, insist the detention policy is here to stay.

No one is asking for hotel standards, pools and buffet dinners but by all reports, the conditions are deplorable and not the likes of which many of us would spend 24 hours in let alone a year and a half. Then again, we have committed no crime, but nor have the detainees. They have a legal right to request asylum, refuge from a life-threatening situation and we are obliged to entertain that request.

If we are to insist on this 12 to 18 month detention period, let’s do it right. We cannot simply put people innocent of no crime away in hangars and, as a society, forget about them.

Malta is no longer, at least at present, under anywhere near the same migratory strain it had been some years back. Now we are in a far better position, since we are not caught unawares as we were in the past, to respond to the humanitarian issue in a more humanitarian way.