Talking point - NGO moderation

The 20 men, gathered for Sunday Mass, all in their 20s and 30s, were sitting on the floor or on thin mattresses in the starkly empty room. The altar was a wobbly stack of three cardboard boxes, because there was no table, and the priest was standing up, because there was no chair.

This is not the beginning of the stock homily for Missions Sunday, but a weekly occurrence when I celebrate Mass at C Block in Safi detention centre. This block, the first one to be purposely built as a detention centre, is certainly a big improvement on the others, which range from tents to "converted" warehouses. Yet, in this complex housing some 180 young men, there is no chair, not even one table, no hot water, and in one of the main rooms, a badly leaking roof, in a place described in a government publication as lacking nothing (mghammar b'kollox).

According to a report in The Times on the budget debate on migration, NGOs were asked to "moderate their criticism". Obviously, the level of one's moderation is a subjective evaluation, but when one visits detention centres practically every day and witnesses such degrading conditions that need no more than some goodwill - and little expense - to be improved, it is very difficult to remain silent.

The government's decision last year to treat migration as a foreign policy issue was certainly a step in the right direction, for we believe that any solution can ultimately only come from real and effective burden sharing by bigger and stronger states.

Finding better ways of limiting access (through Frontex or other means) and of facilitating resettlement or repatriation is not everything. It is vital for the debate on reception policy, and especially on detention, to continue but, judging by newspaper reports, it seems that detention was not really discussed in the budget debates. And the only critical voices, coming from NGOs, are invited to moderate their criticism.

In fact, the least moderate criticism did not come from NGOs but from such sober international organisations as the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner, the Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament. The motion approved by all the groups of the European Parliament, after showing understanding and solidarity with our situation, "deplores, nevertheless, the unacceptable living conditions of the migrants and asylum seekers in Malta's administrative detention centres, and calls on the Maltese authorities to reduce substantially the length of time migrants are held".

JRS (Malta), together with other NGOs that form part of the International Coalition on Detention, believes that the authorities must have the moral and political courage to step back and sincerely ask themselves whether the detention policy adopted at the start of the migration crisis in 2002 has proved to be the best one in the circumstances. Is the present policy of detaining all who arrive in boats, for a maximum of 18 months in sub-human conditions attaining its ends? What was chosen in an "emergency" situation is not necessarily valid today, and experience shows that some serious rethinking can generate a situation that is more humane, more efficient and also, less expensive.

Interestingly, more than 50 per cent of the migrants who apply for asylum are actually given some form of protection, so the majority of detainees are being deprived of their freedom for long months unnecessarily. We strongly believe that children should never be detained, and that there should be a more transparent structure to determine a request to be considered as a vulnerable person eligible for immediate release.

The fact that discipline is administered according to rules that are not publicly available results in a level of arbitrariness unacceptable in a democratic state, and no amount of kindness and understanding on the part of the individual soldiers can redress this. A board of visitors similar to the prison visitors board, vested with powers by law, is still a promise, very often repeated but still unfulfilled.

Faced with such situations, by now well known to all, we can only wonder why our society, so proud to be a part of the western, Christian and human rights tradition, chooses silence and "moderation".