New wing at Safi to be opened soon

Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Harry Vassallo was highly critical of the state of detention centres during a conference at the university yesterday on illegal immigrants.

"The army ran a camp for years in a way that would shame any boy scout troop," he said referring to the Safi detention centre.

Not many people could see the "shocking conditions" in which detainees were kept and the "inhuman and degrading treatment" to which they were subjected, since few had visited the place and the media are barred from the camps.

Around 200 immigrants were being kept in Safi in a huge tin hut which previously housed military vehicles, he said.

The male detainees had given up their blankets so that the women could use them as curtains for privacy, while 200 people were sharing one toilet.

He pointed out, however, that improvements had been made at the Hal Far centre.

A first-hand experience of life in detention was given by Sam, 27, an Eritrean teacher who has been granted humanitarian status. He described life in detention as "very hard", especially for the first few months, when men, women and children were crammed in tents.

He had been detained twice back home - once during his university years and the second while writing poems and short stories for a newspaper - before mustering enough courage to flee Eritrea. After crossing the Sahara and entering Libya, he was in two unsuccessful attempts to cross the Mediterranean when a number of people drowned.

On Sam's third boat trip in September 2004, the boat developed problems and the group was rescued by the Maltese army.

Speaking during the conference, organised by Studenti Demokristjani Maltin and attended only by a few students, Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg said the issue of irregular migration instils a multitude of emotions, including fear. He stressed the importance of going the middle way, with Malta continuing to honour its obligations and being generous with those who deserve protection. Last year, 55 per cent of applicants were given some form of protection, he said.

The detention law would be retained because the country's small size did not permit letting free those who entered unlawfully.

The new wing of the Safi barracks costing Lm500,000, excluding labour fees, would soon be opened. Although he expressed hope that tents would no longer be needed, he did not rule out their use.

Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil said a daily human tragedy was turning the Mediterranean Sea into a mass graveyard. This human tragedy was having a negative impact on society, and he pointed to letters in newspapers that verged on xenophobia, "if not outright racism".

Amnesty International Malta group coordinator Jean Pierre Gauci said the fact that the media did not have access to detention centres did away with accountability.

Fr Paul Pace, the director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, recounted experiences of immigrants who were kept in detention for more than 18 months. He said a group of Eritreans who arrived last year only started to be interviewed after seven months spent in detention.