The six-hour riot at the Hal Far migrants open centre was a main topic of discussion this week.

It started on Sunday evening and spilled over into the early hours of Monday before it was brought under control. Cars were set on fire and considerable damage was caused by a sizeable group of migrants – initial reports in some sections of the media said that as many as 1,200 took part in the uprising, but this was quickly whittled down.

It led to the arrests of some 300 migrants, of whom more than 100 taken to court. The majority of them were remanded in custody after pleading not guilty, while a few of them admitted their involvement and were sentenced to six weeks in jail.

The incident unfortunately led to some uncalled for outbursts on the social media, with some of them going way beyond acceptable levels of decency. It was good to hear, this week also, that a specialised unit will be set up to monitor hate speech. It’s about time that some people get punished for what they vomit publicly.

In this particular circumstance, the police would do well to take action against at least a few of those who, in their posts, called for migrants to be burnt. The police should not take action only when politicians are threatened.

As usually happens when similar incidents occur, some people tend to put everyone in the same basket and make generalisations which are certainly out of order.

For one thing, if one migrant causes a disturbance, it does not mean that all migrants are trouble-makers. And if 100 migrants caused trouble at the Hal Far centre last Sunday, there were another 1,000 who kept away from the disruption or tried to stop their fellow migrants from what they were doing. Imagine if all the Maltese were to be branded as criminals just because a Maltese man commits a crime abroad – this would deeply offend us and, likewise, it offends law-abiding migrants when some people say they are all criminals.

Having said this, like all other offenders, migrants who broke the law need to be brought to book. As the Prime Minister said in Parliament, nobody is above the law. And, in fact, it did not take long for the police to identify the culprits and take them to court to face the consequences of their actions.

We must also not overlook the fact that employees who work with the migrants at Hal Far were genuinely terrified with what was going on. Even here, it is good to note that after the incident the government has said that it will see that the workers are protected better. Perhaps such happenings should have been anticipated, but as we say, it’s better late than never.

The media also has its role to play. In this respect, it was not right that some outlets inflated the numbers, and this in itself was partly responsible for the people’s bad reactions on the social media. The media must be careful in the way such occurrences are reported. It cannot be seen as a reason for more hatred to be spewed.