The Depasquale Report - 1

Judge Franco Depasquale's report on the incidents at the Safi detention centre in January 2005 and "all ancillary questions" is balanced and contains a wealth of information; but it makes difficult reading. It is written in the heavy Maltese prose style dear to our judges and it goes on for 97 pages. I know few people who started reading it and fewer still who read it all. It is a pity because some of the most thoughtful considerations can be found in the latter part of the report.

Judge Depasquale gives a detailed and meticulous account of the incidents. More importantly, however, he delves deep into the root causes of our immigration problem. It is a tale of three continents and of the huge gap in economic standards between Europe on the one hand and Africa and Asia, including most of the Arab world, on the other.

Malta's role is shown to be marginal and incidental, and in many cases purely coincidental. As Africa's and Asia's underdevelopment will unfortunately remain with us for many decades, we might as well concentrate on the long-term aspects, rather than the more newsworthy occasional events.

In the following paragraphs, I quote long extracts from the latter part of Judge Depasquale's report, which I have translated into, I trust, simple English. Each quotation is followed by the number of the page where it can be found in the original Maltese text.

The land trip

The report says that, except for a few immigrants "who arrived in Libya directly from Pakistan, most started their trip to Europe from Niger or some other country on the border of the desert with Libya. They know that there they can find regular transport to cross the desert and bring them to the Libyan frontier. This seems to be an organised and regular transport service and presents only the difficulty of price.

"The trip does not present any danger and takes five days, generally by trucks carrying up to 20 persons; those having enough money can take more comfortable vehicles. The drivers... indicate to the immigrants potential employers in Libya who can employ them until they save enough money. If the immigrants already have money, they take them directly to Zowara or Zletin, from where there is a transport service to Europe" (pp. 67-68).

"It is well known that there are more than a million immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Libya, waiting for an opportunity to leave for Europe. If we base ourselves on statistics of those arriving in Malta, one can conclude that most of them cannot be classified as refugees" (pp. 77-78).

"Although some of the immigrants allege they escaped from their country because of some war or dictatorship, it transpired that almost all left their homes to look for a better future, or to join family members already settled in some European country. Many detainees admitted that they and their families had a good job in their country of origin and had even been owners of large fields and had themselves been employers.

"Most are young people with an above-normal level of initiative and they get to know that other young persons like them succeeded in entering Europe, found a job and are living a much better life there... When they decide to emigrate, friends and relatives help them collect money for this adventure. As soon as they arrive in Europe and start earning money, they start sending money back home. This helps others to leave for Europe. It transpired that this takes place regularly even from Malta" (p. 68).

"In their testimony, many detainees mention persons who help them organise their trip and who indicate other persons in Libya and Europe who serve as a support system. These intermediaries promise to take them to Italy from where they soon contact their relatives and friends in Italy or in other European countries...

"It seems that this trafficking takes place even in Malta. From the witnesses heard, it can be confirmed that the transport of immigrants is internationally organised and very profitable. It is to be noted that, while we hear about trips which end tragically, the majority of these thousands of immigrants are transported quickly and successfully" (p. 68).

The sea trip

"The system is so well organised that, with the necessary money, one can join one's relatives in Europe in a few months or weeks. The sea trip is the riskiest. Tragedies occur mostly because criminal traffickers take risks by sending the boat even in rough seas or, to increase their profit, overload the boat with people or carry insufficient fuel" (pp. 68-69).

"Transport from Libya normally leaves from Zowara or Zletin. All immigrants agreed that there is a fixed price of 1,000 dollars per passenger for the trip and the boat leaves as soon as the required number of passengers is found... The route from Zowara to Sicily or Lampedusa is wide and does not pose many problems. But Zletin is further to the east and the route passes close to Malta's Search and Rescue Region.

"As soon as they veer from the right course, they come within this region, continuously monitored by Italian airplanes. The latter inform their central office in Italy, which requests the Maltese to go to their rescue, sometimes even further out than 80 miles from Malta. Not a single one of the immigrants interviewed wanted to come to Malta.

"They knew where they wanted to go; they did not just want to escape from their country. Had they been so terrified of the political or military situation in their country, they would have been happy enough with the degree of freedom they enjoyed in Libya; but they all had a fixed point of destination which was not Malta" (p. 69).

"When the immigrants realise that the rescue boat is Maltese and not Italian they generally protest, but they have no choice because they are effectively arrested. Their boat is not always in distress... Many immigrants explained that at night they turn off the engines and sleep...

"At dawn they turn on the engine again and proceed on their way... Even if there is nothing indicating they have a problem, when their boat is at a standstill the notice goes out that they are in distress. Maltese army personnel are requested to go and rescue them, and the immigrants are brought to Malta despite their protests" (p. 93).

Repatriation

The report quotes the testimony of a member of an NGO as saying that the main reason why immigrants do not want to go back to their country of origin is shame. "The whole village knows that the poor individual had left his family and country to look for a better life; often he had been helped financially by relatives and friends. It would be too humiliating for him for the same people to see him coming back worse off than before, while others left and are already sending money home. Another reason mentioned was the debt that the individual had incurred before leaving, which means that he cannot return empty handed" (p. 70).

This explains why immigrants make the repatriation process so difficult. "Many of them do their best to complicate life for their lawyers and the officers concerned... Immigrants do their best to get rid of all documents that may lead the responsible officer to identify the country to which they should be sent back... They are also careful not to communicate with their country of origin while in detention" (p. 74).

"This contrasts with what they do as soon as they leave detention; newspapers have reported that large numbers of immigrants pay to use international telephones and the Internet, mostly in Valletta, and one understands that they do this to communicate with overseas" (p. 75).

Once out of detention "many of them found clandestine work; we heard of many cases where they are exploited by being underpaid or made to work long hours at hard jobs for which not many Maltese workers can be found... Those who have a work permit earn good money ...

"One can also include many more or less attractive women who earn large sums of money through prostitution... These immigrants are at the origin of substantial transfers of money abroad... via accredited financial institutions, but no information seems to exist as to the senders and receivers of such money" (pp. 95-96).

There are many other aspects of Malta's immigration problem that are tackled in the report and that deserve further in-depth examination. In the meantime, Judge Depasquale should be thanked for his thoroughness and for his courage in refusing to take the easy and superficial way out by limiting his report to one day's events.

He made all readers see what should be obvious to everybody: immigration has its origin in the very poor economic standards prevailing in Africa and Asia and the pull exercised by the better standard of living and higher wages to be found in Europe. Economic problems call for economic, not humanitarian, solutions.

To be continued