Through the looking glass, darkly

The government is using a tired argument to justify its detention policy for asylum seekers, says Sharon Spiteri, but also a fundamentally dangerous one which encourages xenophobia.

There is a line no government should cross. And that is from the powerful to the despotic. This government is hovering on the brink.

It has made the kind of ill-advised statement only an arrogant bully would make and the thought of being governed by a sulky schoolboy with a relaxed attitude to violence is rather upsetting.

"No matter what anyone says, our country will retain its detention policy because it is in the national interest," the Department of Information statement, released to reiterate the government's policy of locking up all arriving asylum seekers, said.

It is an arrogant statement. The government seems to need a short, sharp shock to serve as a timely reminder that it is a democratically-elected government and if the people say otherwise then any government policy would have to go.

But it is also the bullying kind, because the government is flexing its power muscle in the context of some of the most vulnerable people on the island. These are people from countries with (at different times in different places) no democracy, no government, no peace, no law and order, no security and little prospect of a future.

Whether or not one agrees with the detention policy for asylum seekers, this still remains an intolerable approach to government. But apart from its appalling tone, the sentence also contains a notion I find extremely problematic: the national interest.

Every time the government wants to implement an unpleasant measure, it trots out the "national interest", pretty much like the odd cod liver oil tablet, with the warning that the taste might be pretty nasty but it is for the common good.

I find the national interest something of an expedient myth. And a quick look at the dictionary definition does not help. It is "a vague term which may refer to some highly technical, rational decision-making, perhaps in the area of the economy, which turns out to be very unpopular with the public. Hence, the term may refer to the aggregate of individual interests, whatever that is. Like the 'common good' and the 'general will' it is easier to talk about it than to determine what it is".

But the real problem with "the national interest" in Malta is that we are not interested. As a people, we have never been particularly concerned with rising above individual or group advantage. The idea of the nation, an imagined community at the best of times, is particularly elusive.

Instead, we expend most of our time and energy rooting for our political party of choice and since the main political parties are just two and equally powerful, this has made for a prolonged tug-of-war. Fascinating, but only in the same way that some people find pugilism entertaining.

Godfrey Baldacchino, currently chair of island studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, has argued that "Malta today is a 'nationless state', a 37-year-old sovereign unit where the nation is yet to be formed".

He suggests that the national interest has been sacrificed to make way for the strong loyalties to the party and the Church. "In this incessant, internal struggle for loyalty and support, Maltese nationalism has lost out."

"...only the members of the troika - the two main political parties and the Catholic Church - loom large as anchors of identity. The 'national interest' has been sabotaged: imploded into frenzied partisanship internally; replaced by integrationism externally."

Prof. Baldacchino made his argument in a paper published in the journal West European Politics in 2002. Writing then, before the referendum on EU membership and subsequent general election, he wondered "to what extent a rigidly partisan vote would dictate Malta's European destiny, rather than the other way round".

A perfectly sensible question to ponder especially with the EU membership debate strictly dictated by partisan lines. But it was no preparation for how many people have no problem admitting that party politics is the single most compelling reason they voted in favour or against the EU. Naïve? Maybe.

I wonder how Prof. Baldacchino feels to be right about something so wrong. Possibly the same way I feel about Malta's detention policy. Not so much that I think I'm right as much as the shame I feel when I have to face the fact that my country jails asylum seekers in appalling conditions for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I read and hear all the time, as justification, that asylum seekers are committing a crime when they come into the country illegally. Even if I were to accept that argument, the difference between the "entirely acceptable conditions" at Corradino prisons and the bleak, inadequate and crowded conditions at detention centres tells the story.

In an interview he gave to Vanessa Macdonald, Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg defended the policy by saying: "The opposition and the government agree on the detention of illegal migrants, or irregular migrants as I prefer to call them. We do not detain them because they are asylum seekers but because they have entered Malta illegally. If they enter Malta legally and apply for asylum, they are not detained".

Now, without fail, every time I broach the subject of asylum seekers with anyone who does not quite see eye to eye with me, I get accused of being naïve. But this is beyond naïve, because this is a government minister who has been briefed on policy development and is hopefully aware of research carried out by organisations like the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) or the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

ECRE, for example, makes it very clear that "illegal entry to the territory of a European state is in itself unacceptable as grounds for the detention of an asylum seeker". This is because flight is sometimes impromptu, at other times barred.

One refugee I spoke to told me she fled her village when the rebels came, meaning to seek refuge at her husband's village. On the way there, she learnt that the rebels had already been to her husband's village and had killed everyone in sight. So she just kept on walking and walking and walking. Going back was unthinkable. It meant certain death. She just walked until she felt safe enough to stop walking. What is so hard to understand? Have we lost all ability to empathise?

And yet we have our government still trotting out the old excuse at every opportunity because it is easier to explain detention as a "punishment" for the crime of entering the country illegally. "They cannot break our laws with impunity," is the recurring defence.

I expect Dr Borg also knows full well that UNHCR sets out very clearly that a country may only resort to detention in exceptional circumstances and should be avoided even in those circumstances.

The UNHCR is "as a matter of principle, opposed to the detention of asylum seekers and regrets that many countries hold asylum seekers in detention, particularly if they entered the country without authorisation".

Detention is meant to be a last resort and should be considered only on an individual basis, when all other options fail. Not a dragnet. Yet, our government has told us precious little about what other options it explored. Why simple reporting measures do not seem to have made the cut. Why the idea of bail is only being mooted now and no real details have appeared in the press, except for some sketchy details in the interview with Ms Macdonald.

"If a person has been in detention for a long time and you have not been able to finalise his case or repatriate him, you cannot forget about him. If someone steals then he faces a sentence and knows how long it is. So why shouldn't someone in detention have the same right?" Dr Borg tried to reason.

But what is a period "that is no longer reasonable"? Is it a week, two months, a year? Is Dr Borg not aware that ECRE says that "an absolute maximum duration for any such detention should be specified in national law"?

So far it has turned out to be 18 months. I say that because in June 2003 the government unofficially conceded that any asylum seeker who had been in detention for longer than 18 months could move to an open centre. Freedom at last.

But in reality, this meant moving from one dirty, crowded barracks to another. Living in exactly the same conditions, except that asylum seekers could now come and go, not exactly as they pleased, because the barracks were run by the army and they could not help trying to introduce a regimented tone. So asylum seekers were allowed to come and go every hour on the hour until curfew. Yes, curfew. This was army turf after all.

Eighteen months might actually sound reasonable to anyone who remembers the case of the immigrant held at Ta' Kandja in the mid-1990s when asylum seekers were even less a matter of public concern. He was held for five years and had become so much a part of the furniture that he was allowed "to come and go".

Tomorrow: Detention is not a deterrent.