The new slave trade

A television documentary on the mv Yioham tragedy showed the remains of the victims lying on the seabed probably at a considerable depth. Clothes and shoes lay in shapeless heaps on a muddy bottom. At times it was possible to make out a bone or two.

They had come a long way to their watery grave in the blue Mediterranean: India, Sri Lanka. The monument to their tragedy is a boat that lies beside them having set off from Marsaxlokk. Homer's winedark sea has become a grave for political and economic refugees from across the globe.

This week close to 100 Somalis joined them after 20 days adrift in an open boat. The fifteen survivors of the nightmare cruise did not have the strength to jettison the last corpses of their comrades, their friends and family.

Lampedusa has been exposed to the shock of having the bloated corpses of men, women and children washed up on its sunny beaches. Taking a photo opp in Lampedusa, Italian Speaker Pier Ferdinando Casini said it was too much for Lampedusans to have their morning constitutionals disturbed in this way.

Had the Maltese been in the sorry state of the Somalis instead of being near-EU citizens, he would find the bodies of my brothers and sisters a similar blight on his damn beach. In Somalia, relatives of the dead may never learn what has become of their loved ones.

People have become the stock-in-trade of an international network, an illegal travel trade exploiting the economic disparity between North and South and the political turmoil of the world's poorest countries. It is the slave trade once more, without the shackles perhaps, with more willingness in the victims, with the deaths nonetheless.

Malta is an established transit station for the new trade in humans. Businessmen with legitimate façades participate in what must be a lucrative enterprise - tax free of course. Malta is also an accidental landfall for many intending to sail past our overcrowded islands.

There have been far too many accidental landfalls. Malta appears to be unable to cope. There is an echo of panic and exasperation in the tone of government ministers and public officials facing the music. The immigrants are poor, many uneducated, nearly all dark-skinned, all of them foreigners.

Faceless and nameless to the public, they all too easily become a nuisance, a burden on public finances, a catalyst to xenophobia and latent racism. Without ever having seen any of them, many of us have a feeling of panic, of claustrophobia: Malta seems to be sinking under their weight.

They are people. They are people brave and bold. How many of us would venture into the utter unknown in the hands of the world's most ruthless travel agents with hardly a bundle of possessions and all the family in tow? Entrepreneurship? They have a lot to teach us.

Many of them had no choice at all: Starve at home or risk death on the arduous way to God knows what. In Malta they are cooped up in quarters intended to hold a sixth of their number.

For many months, some for as much as two years, are imprisoned under conditions we would not inflict on our worst criminals. To hardship and misery we add humiliation.

We have done worse. We have repatriated political refugees to Eritrea where they have been imprisoned by the regime they oppose. Some have disappeared. When will their families and friends forget the Maltese?

There are 600 people in police custody. Why? Why are they arrested? Why are they not allowed to wander our streets? Because they would escape to a better place and shame us? Because they would be unsightly? Because they would be able to look us in the eye?

For decades the Maltese have given generously to charities. They have sent out missionaries to every corner of the earth and sustain them through intermittent if significant financial support. Now the world's poor have turned up on our doorstep and many of us find it far too close for comfort.

It was fine to send a tenner to Brother Joseph somewhere in the jungles of Borneo or the favellas of Rio. Meeting the people to whom he gives his life is more than we can bear. We can see them, smell them and touch them. We are witnesses of their humanity. It seems to be too much for some of us.

Malta has gone from colony and third world country to first world country far too fast. We seem unable to cope with the change. For years we felt that we were the ones entitled to sundry handouts from our rich neighbours. Suddenly we find that our country has become a pjazza in the global village and that we are the rich.

From being the poor, and therefore the good, helping the distant poorer, we have become the rich trying not to notice the destitute on our doorstep. We are all becoming the bad rich of political rhetoric and unable to accept it. We are in denial.

Irregular immigrants and political refugees are seen as a threat to our new-found affluence which we hope to increase. They are a much bigger threat to our misconceptions of ourselves.

Twenty minutes away from us there are 600 people detained in conditions in which we would not keep a pet animal. If we talk about it at all we worry about ever more of them arriving. What are we going to do? Should the army shoot at them as has been suggested on a lunatic TV show?

There is no question that the wave of immigration from the poor world to the rich is about to engulf us. Instead of worrying about it we should accept reality. It will not be different if we deny it.

We unquestionably need all the help we can get from our wealthy northern neighbours to deal with it. What we need most is not the money to cover expenses but confidence that something is being done at source to address the phenomenon.

Yes, it is good to know that agreements are being made with countries which can restrict the flow. Yes, it is heartening to know that armies and navies will be mobilised to patrol the seas. Hopefully, the exploiting network of highly organised criminals will be challenged too.

Yet, above all, it is necessary to know that the causes of the migration of misery are being addressed. Nothing we see on our TV sets seems comforting. The world's masters seem intent on preserving their mastery regardless of the widening gap between rich and poor. If Malta has a voice at all, it needs to find it soon and speak out against the further exacerbation of the problems of which this wave of immigration is only a symptom.

Ask any one of the 600 prisoners in our reception facilities whether they would not rather live their lives in peace and plenty among their friends and neighbours and it would be hard to find one who would prefer to put his life in the hands of criminals to become the poorest of the poor in a strange land.

Emigration is something we should be familiar with. Not a single Maltese family has escaped suffering part of the diaspora of Maltese around the world. We know that many return after a lifetime away because their yearning for home never ends. We should be able to recognise our own families in the dark faces of the detainees. Would we have wanted our relatives cooped up and treated like criminals?

Does it make a difference that these are strangers? That they speak another tongue, have strange names or have a different faith? More than ever before they are our neighbours too.

If it does make a difference then we are challenged to our very souls. Can we say that we are not racists? Can we say that we are not xenophobes? Can we say that we are Christians?

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt