Security forces heads explain difficulties encountered

Asylum seekers should be detained for a maximum of two months and such a period should be prescribed by law, the Jesuit Refugee Service has suggested.

Studies and reports had proven that detention was harming and criminalising people and it was high time for a revision of this maligned policy, JRS director Fr Pierre Grech Marguerat told those present at the national conference on irregular migration.

Among others, the proposals state that detention should be resorted to only as an initial response to the arrival of large numbers of asylum seekers until they file an application for refugee status, registration takes place and basic health screening is carried out.

Fr Grech Marguerat said that beyond the two-month period, detention should only be resorted to if the authorities can demonstrate that non-custodial measures have proved ineffective in individual cases.

The JRS urged the government to provide the basic minimum to asylum seekers, including some form of accommodation in one of the open centres, access to the labour market and financial assistance to those that cannot work.

Responding to the constant criticism levelled at the pitiful state of the Safi Barracks, the commander of the Armed Forces of Malta, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo, said that permanent units providing adequate quarters of accommodation and basic services to irregular immigrants would be erected to replace canvas tents.

He also touched upon the problems his forces were facing on a daily basis: "It's not easy to convince a person to live under a canvas tent for several months and it is equally not easy for a soldier to supervise the immigrants and provide 400 to 500 people in the detention centres and 250 people in the open centres with three meals a day".

Brigadier Vassallo highlighted the huge sea area his personnel were responsible for supervising in a Mediterranean sea renowned for traffic - 250,000 square kilometres, roughly 860 times the size of Malta.

The AFM saved 1,005 individuals from the seas since March 2002, including a boat packed with 249 individuals, which was being battered to pieces by the waves, some 45 miles off Malta.

Police Commissioner John Rizzo said that irregular immigrants were paying between $800 and $2,000 per trip in the hope of going to Europe. He said that with the exception of two cases, all boat landings in Malta were initially intended to end up on Italian shores.

Mr Rizzo spoke of the problems the authorities were facing in trying to establish the nationality of the irregular immigrants, to the extent that some of them claimed different nationalities each time they were interviewed.

The Commissioner for Refugees, Charles Buttigieg spoke about the way his office analyses every detail to ensure a fair system of evaluation. Since its inception in January 2002, the office has delved into the cases of over 2,000 individuals.

Other speakers during yesterday's conference was Emigrants' Commission chairman Mgr. Philip Calleja and conference chairman Joe Gerada.

A two-hour workshop involving the authorities and the several NGOs was held after the speeches.