The recent riot at the Safi detention centre by frustrated asylum seekers who had been denied refugee status, the prospect now that the Gaddafi regime has been overthrown and we may face an increased influx of asylum seekers, have once again brought to national attention the problem we variously describe as illegal immigration, asylum seekers, and so on.

There was a time when this problem occupied centre stage in the national consciousness. Then our attention was diverted to other issues. For the most part, we now seem to have accepted that the presence of these people, who many times find it impossible to leave Malta once they are landed here, is part of the national scene.

But then all it takes is a riot, or an accident in which asylum seekers are involved, for all the suppressed or forgotten xenophobic hysteria to break out once again.

For buried deep in our DNA there is a very definite manner in which we look at asylum seekers, a manner, an outlook, we have long had.

I would not say this attitude is part of our natural national make-up, for as a people we have long been known to be a hospitable one. Down at the Birgu quay, before it became Vittoriosa, people from all sorts of countries mixed together, all sorts of languages were spoken and it was most probably there that the original Semitic language got interspersed with Romance words and the Maltese language was born.

But then the Knights came and our attitude to dark-skinned people from the south was corrupted. It has not really changed since. Two hundred years down the line, we still have the same xenophobic, racist, superior outlook.

There are even more similarities than we care to notice.

For our knowledge of our history is tainted by nationalistic overtones, and politics overlaid with nationalistic attitudes have twisted the way we perceive things to have been.

This has happened as regards the period of the Knights. For us, that period was one long chain of glory, beginning with the Great Siege we so love to celebrate, and continuing with our present restoration of Valletta to its former glory and the care we devote to restoring the palaces, auberges, churches of that outburst of baroque that the Knights’ 200 years presence brought with it.

But little is said of the obscurantism, the closed mentality, the resistance to change and modern times that the last decades of the Knights’ presence brought with it. Little is said of the poverty suffered by the ordinary Maltese in contrast to the wealth of the Knights.

In the end, the Maltese, the ordinary Maltese, were sick and tired of the Knights, of their arrogance and pride, the haughtiness with which they treated the Maltese in their own land, and deprived them of having any standing except the lowest, unless they were priests or lawyers. The uprising we know as the Mannarino rebellion was not the act of a deranged priest but a Tahrir Square moment. When the Grand Master reacted as Mubarak and Gaddafi did, the Maltese taking part melted away and left Don Gaetano Mannarino to face long years in jail.

Later on, the Maltese may have reacted against Napoleon frogmarching them to modern times (and stealing from churches) but they were resolute they did not want the Knights back.

However, the Knights, I say, left us with one signal inheritance – our racist attitude to all those with a dark skin. It has sometimes been noted that up to quite recently we still called Arab people Torok (Turks) and for many of us there is no real difference between people from Turkey and people from North Africa.

I want to refer to a recently published book, which includes a not-so-very complimentary description of Malta in 1790. The focus of this book (Carasi: The Order of Malta exposed, translated by Thomas Freller) is the Order and its maladministration of Malta.

‘Carasi’ may well have been a pseudonym, as many books were in those days. The full title of the book explains it all: “The Order of Malta exposed; or a voyage to Malta, containing historical, philosophical, and critical observations on the actual situation of the State of the Knights of Malta and their morals; also containing descriptions of the nature, products of the island, and the customs of its inhabitants.”

As I was reading the book, I was struck by the parallelism between the way the slaves were treated and the way even unconsciously we treat asylum seekers today.

There is, of course, one fundamental difference: the slaves were caught and brought here whereas the asylum seekers come here to escape worse situations elsewhere. Even so, both slaves and asylum seekers are unwilling guests.

It is not usually appreciated enough that Malta under the Knights was one big slave market in the middle of the Mediterranean and that slave dealing was one very important source of revenue.

Carasi writes: “The naval weakness (of the Order) contrasts strangely with the strong fortifications of the island. It contradicts the picture of the alleged perpetual war of the forces of the Order with the Ottomans. One has to know that this perpetual war nowadays only exists in the oath of reception into the Order. The galleys of the Order only leave the harbour to undertake a few cruises. The ships of the Order do not anymore go after Levantine shipping or against Tunis and Algiers. They do not even escort merchant ships and boats with provisions that cross all the time from Sicily to Malta and vice-versa. Indeed, the caravans are today only sightseeing trips from one Italian or Sicilian port to another.

“The knights of today consider it against their honour to fight corsairs and leave this business to the Maltese. I use the word ‘business’ as it is really nothing more than that. The Order’s constitution obliges it to be at perpetual war with the infidels, but the cowardice and arrogance of the knights and their negligence in fighting and to carry out proper caravans is disguised by allowing the Maltese to fit out ships and to capture Muslim vessels and corsairs. The Maltese corsairs are very active. Before they depart from Malta, they have to get a letter patent from the Grand Master. This patent is not given for free and the Grand Master receives huge sums to issue it.

“It is easy to guess how the Maltese corsair gets his expenses back. He only loads provisions for two weeks, and leaves the island at nighttime. Very often he then lands on the nearest coast – whether it is friendly or enemy territory does not really matter – and starts raiding and sacking. Every movable item of any value is carried back on board; the rest he burns down. Then he returns home. If this raid is carried out in enemy lands, he captures as many men, women, and children as possible, takes them to Malta, and sells them there on the slave market. If an unarmed vessel is encountered at sea, he attacks it, kills the crew if there is any armed resistance, sacks the cargo, and, after taking everything on board, sinks it. When they return to Malta, the Maltese corsairs have to share their booty with the Grand Master. That is the ‘war’ of the Order, in this manner the knights protect the ships of the Christian powers thanks to whose money this institution is maintained.”

I have quoted such a long passage precisely to point out there is a huge difference between these practices of old and today’s situation. Nor do I know, to be honest, if Carasi’s description is exact or otherwise, given his prejudices against the Order. Maybe this slave-driving past could be studied by historical researchers.

There’s more, however. We have all heard of the Order’s hospital (today the Mediterranean Conference Centre) but I, for one, had never heard of what he calls the ‘Bagnio’, a nearby building. This was, it seems, what we use the Marsa Open Centre for today.

He says: “In the bagnio are locked not only the slaves of the Order but also those who are privately owned. These private owners can send their slaves to the bagnio to be locked there at night. The fee for that is one dollar monthly. In the bagnio no distinction is made between the slaves of the Order and those of private masters. The guards check the gates all the time and control the ones who leave and those who return. At the main entrance is fixed a sort of wardrobe which does not contain clothes or muskets but whips and rods of all sorts. The guards do not talk to the slaves in any other way than with rods and whips. A Maltese slave receives more lashes and hits than he gets beans to eat. Every error or mistake is punished with lashes and the bastinado, which sometimes is less hard, depending on the severity of his mistake or crime and the mood of the overseers and gaolers…

“The slaves all sleep on planks in huge halls. The Rais (the representatives of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, and other cities of the Barbary Coast, who negotiate the ransom and exchange of the slaves, enjoy perfect freedom in Malta but have to reside in the bagnio) or those who had been ship captains, enjoy certain privileges compared to the others. They have special rooms, beds, and some sort of commodities, but they are not allowed to leave the bagnio without a guard at their side. They have to pay these guards. The women are kept in a special quarter of the bagnio.

“Sometimes I had to do guard duty in the bagnio’s courtyard and I saw how the slaves were occupied with various sorts of work. With that, they can improve their situation. When they arrive at the bagnio, they very often do not even have clothes. The Order provides them with a long coat, which they have to wear until it literally falls to pieces. Only then they are provided with new clothes. Only a very few of them are therefore dressed in the clothes in the style of their countries. Some of them look for work in the city, others work as barbers in the public squares or make baskets. Again, others sell a sort of light cake at street corners in the city. Finally, there are others who make some kitchen tools or toys for children out of soft wood, and therewith improve their miserable situation.

“There is a sort of inn within the bagnio. Normally, its temptations go against Muslim law but it is never empty and it serves as the only point of reference and consolation for the slaves. Sometimes there are violent clashes in this inn, and it needs all the force of the guards to tame the anger and hate of drunk Turks. This is the only point where Muslims do not stick to the rules of their religion…

“The slaves are normally used to carry out the hardest and filthiest sort of work. They row on the galleys, clean the harbours, sweep the streets and the squares, clean the channels, and such things. In short, they do everything that the knights order them to do, and this they have to do in perfect punctuality, without complaints or grumbling. Otherwise, they are threatened with severe lashings by the overseers and goalers. The slaves in Malta are rarely tempted to try and escape. During the two years I lived on the island, only three managed to escape…

“Most of the slaves used to be fishermen or poor sailors and had no hope that their families would be able to pay their ransom fee. Therefore they would have to spend the rest of their days as slaves, unless the regent of their home country sometimes send an envoy to negotiate their ransom with the Grand Master. Only a few manage to bring up this money to ransom themselves or receive this money through the aid of their families. When the moment of their release comes, they flee from Malta as if the bubonic plague was raging there.”

There is much more in the book. There is much that is different between then and now. But there is also much that has remained the same – ‘they’ are given the dirty work the Maltese shun doing, ‘they’ are kept in closed centres, many times their lives are at a dead end unless providence intervenes. And whenever ‘they’ meet a Maltese person, many times they sense the same feelings the forefathers of the Maltese had versus their predecessors.

I repeat, I do not believe this formed part of our DNA, but after so many years it has unconsciously become part of ours. To understand these are human beings just like us, with a history of suffering and danger in their own countries is to begin to understand the need to change our centuries-old ingrained prejudice.

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