Malta - The Camp

By Laura Eduati, 27 March, 2006

Source: http://claudiofava.netfirms.com/artman/publish/article_964.shtml

Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo, member of tlaxcala http://www.tlaxcala.es, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation is on copyleft.

The detention centre Safi Barracks of Malta is a gigantic cage where the migrants live like beasts. When the Maltese army opens the locks, dozens of Africans run towards them shouting “Freedom! Liberté!” They come near them with anxious eyes, in an uninterrupted chorus, “Help us, we can non longer live inside this place, we are suffering too much.” Over the bars they have hung a sheet with the writing: “God will judge Malta for what it is doing to the migrants.”

The odour of their bodies, washed with a single bar of soap that must last a month in frighteningly filthy washrooms, is hard to bear. In the rooms where they sleep on dirty mattresses, the luckiest of the lot actually has a sheet that has by now become yellow with dirt. They have been living here for months without even knowing the reason why, without being able to see doctors, lawyers or even volunteers from non-governing organisations. An hour of air a day, sometimes even that is denied to them if they “do not behave.” Without a book or a newspaper to read, or a pen to write with; there is a television in the corner of the “recreation room,” but there is not even one bench to sit down upon and the only channel is in Maltese. “We will become crazy in here.” Some of them have actually already gone crazy. They could no longer withstand the wait, 18 months of imprisonment because they are illegal and with the only chance of getting out being to obtain political asylum in Malta. They could not stand any more: they went mad, the soldiers forced them to sign a paper and then they were taken away. Where?

Mohammed shows us a bucket for washing: within it there are some scraps of white rice and slices of boiled potatoes. “Look what we are given to eat. Every day it is the same food: macaroni and rice. Never any meat or vegetables, only an apple now and then.” Then he takes a fist of it and puts it in his mouth. “We have no forks or even plates.” Only a cup for the Lipton, as they call the tea. A man from Sudan touches his chest. He has asthma but they have given him medicine that had already expired the previous month. It was an Italian free sample. During the visit, numerous migrants show us pills, syrups and aspirin: all of it is expired. The seriously ill are in bed: they aren’t able to unite with the agitation; one suffers from goitre, another is diabetic, another man has a boil on his eye: “They gave me a cream, but it hasn’t healed.”

The Geneva Convention on Refugees establishes that the sick are considered as “vulnerable” and have precedence. They should not be imprisoned. Yet, the conservative government of La Valletta reassures us, in the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Brian Gatt, a man measuring two metres, that the Safi is in reality the most decent place. Because in the other centres of Malta even worse things happen: they end up behind bars for months and months, even children and pregnant women. In the Tà Kandja, on the day of the visit from the Commission of Civil Rights and Internal Affairs of the European Parliament, a group of migrants has rebelled and in the scuffle, a soldier almost lost a finger. And in the afternoon, precisely when the delegation from Brussels was leaving the majestic palace that houses the Ministry of Justice and Internal Affairs, ninety Africans fled the centre “La Floriana” giving rise to a manhunt in the streets of the elegant historical centre.

For months the migrants have been in permanent agitation, and they have organised themselves by provoking uprisings or hunger strikes. It takes very little to understand that since 2004, when the Human Rights Commission of Strasburg wrote a severe report on the conditions of those requesting asylum in Malta, things have not changed even in the slightest. The Maltese, actually, have become impatient. To the prisoners who flee from the grip of the police they shout, “They should be burnt in the open square!” “You should be thanking us for taking you in.” Racism has become a political problem and there is even an alternative party to the Conservative and Labour parties that is making headway to the beat of xenophobic slogans. The government of the island does not hide the crisis caused by the migrants. A crisis that has become acute since 2004, the year of entrance in the European Union, thus transforming this island into the principle port between Mediterranean Africa and the old continent.

The Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs Tonio Borg sounds off data and explains that Malta is no longer able to handle the migrants. The inference is not long in coming: “The European Union must help us, we can’t do everything on our own.”

Today every member State must act as it best believes and the Maltese legislation is extremely harsh regarding it: all illegal migrants must be imprisoned for 18 months. The migrants will then not have the possibility, once disembarked, to ask for a stay permit for work reasons: it seems that the government does not even slightly contemplate this possibility. Many ask for political asylum, but in vain: the commission for refugees in Malta is the most poorly employed office and work moves at a snail’s pace. In all of this, the members of the delegation of the European Parliament were shocked and disgusted: “Brussels can no longer tolerate this concentration camp, it is necessary to harmonise the laws on immigration of the European Union.” From both the right and the left, the comment is unanimous.