Return to sender?

AS individuals, mainly from Africa, continue to arrive at Malta's shores, one tends to speak in terms of boatloads and numbers. It seems that people forget (or choose to forget) that behind any one of those numbers there is a name, a face, a history, a family, a human being with hopes and fears.

Talk of invasions and influxes make people ignore the humanity of these persons, their human rights including their right to dignity and even more the human rights violations they are escaping from.

Amnesty International would like to point out that returning persons to their country of origin, or to the country which they left immediately before arriving in Malta, could - if they are refugees - equally condemn them to torture, ill-treatment or serious violations of human rights, and in some cases even their right to life. Although returning people to the place they came from might seem like an attractive option to some, it does in many cases constitute a serious human rights abuse.

Under international refugee law, Malta has a number of obligations with regard to people in need of international protection. There is an absolute prohibition of refoulement, meaning that a state is prohibited from sending someone back to a country where they would be at risk of grave human rights abuses.

When considering whether someone is a refugee, full attention needs to be paid to the conditions which they have left in their countries of origin. Despite this, many people fail to consider the conditions from which many individuals arriving in Malta are fleeing. In public debates in Malta, one rarely, if ever, hears about the large numbers of people being arrested in Eritrea for the peaceful expression of their opinion or religious beliefs, the political prisoners being held indefinitely without trial and the ill-treatment of those fleeing or evading military conscription.

People also seem fairly unaware of the reality of life in Somalia with its high levels of political violence and of torture. Yet, individuals arriving from these countries are often judged and ill-treated and portrayed as 'fortune-seekers', instead of having their asylum claims fairly examined.

A lack of understanding of these situations becomes apparent when in newspapers and in public debates one hears comments like "I would have stayed and changed the situation in my own country" and "refugees are cowards". While work needs to be done on the human rights situation in the countries from which refugees and potential asylum-seekers originate, this does not detract from the human obligation to protect refugees reaching the shores of Malta.

To understand why refugees and asylum-seekers end up on Malta's shores, one has to understand their background. Amnesty International is confident that greater awareness of the conditions faced in the country of origin of the people who flee to Europe and occasionally end up in Malta, would help the Maltese people to better understand why these individuals have decided to leave everything they had, their families, their homes and their memories, behind.

We are confident that this would help people understand that refugees come to Malta not to create problems, but to escape the dreadful human rights abuses that they were suffering, and that they are in need of compassion, help and welcome.

Under national and international human rights and refugee law, refugees have rights. They are not breaking any laws by entering Malta as long as they subsequently apply for asylum. In fact, everyone has the right to apply for asylum. Yet they are kept in detention centres during the excessively long asylum procedure. When taken out for medical visits they are handcuffed, a situation which is humiliating to these individuals and depicts them as criminals.

The situation in detention centres in Malta is deplorable and has been criticised by various organisations and institutions, including the Council of Europe, the European Union, Amnesty International and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) states in a recently published report that detention facilities, which were not purpose-built, are overcrowded and notes ill-treatment in the detention centres. The CPT delegation also reported that sanitary conditions and hygiene fell short of international standards. The detention of children and the presence of unaccompanied minors in detention facilities where adult persons are being detained is also highly worrying.

It is often argued that Malta is a small country which cannot cope with the "influx" of large quantities of people. Although the effects of large-scale entering of potential asylum-seekers are magnified in a small country, this cannot be used as an excuse for violating human rights. If Malta decides to ignore its international commitments, it risks alienating itself from the international community.

African countries have problems which need to be addressed but, while these continue, it is Malta's legal and moral duty to help those who need its protection until the problems in their countries are tackled effectively. Returning people to their native countries often means sending them straight back to the perpetrators of violations of human rights such as torture, rape, unlawful imprisonment, from which they were fleeing. Would you like to have that on your conscience?

Amnesty International appeals to the Maltese people to treat those coming to Malta in the same way that they themselves would like to be treated if they ever had to seek protection in another country.

Mr Dahlbeck is the Malta researcher at Amnesty International's International Secretariat; Mr Gauci is the group co-ordinator of Amnesty International Malta