More on moderation

I will do my best to reply to the three questions posed by Louise Vella (Questions for JRS, December 7):

Although I am not the author of the phrase cited from the JRS (US) website, I presume that the words "high level protests" refer to JRS Malta's well known representations made to the Maltese government and to those foreign delegations from international human rights organisations and parliaments who wanted to know our views on the present detention system. Some of these can be found on our website.

With reference to the Francisco y Catalina case, JRS then requested only that the migrants be allowed to land while the states involved tried to reach a final decision regarding their fate; and that any decision taken be in line with Malta's legal obligations, particularly that of not sending people to a country where they will face persecution. At no time did JRS request that the migrants be allowed to remain in Malta or try to stop their resettlement in countries where their human rights would be respected.

Also, just for the record, there is no JRS office in Spain, which might explain the Spanish silence in this case.

Regarding our finances, JRS has been granted funding from the European Refugee Fund and the Baxter International Foundation (though not from the EU Monitoring Centre in Vienna) to run very specific projects, providing legal and social work and professional services to asylum seekers in detention. These projects were submitted by JRS and approved by the institutions concerned, and the grants are subject to strict reporting procedures, where transparency and accountability are key requirements throughout the implementation of the project. Our financial accounts have been audited for many years (though not by Ernst and Young) and we are ready to show them to those who would like to see them.

Like many other NGOs, JRS applied for and obtained an exemption from income tax, a sign of the state's appreciation of the work of NGOs. Yet, given that JRS is seeking to meet needs that are far greater than the resources available, most of the time our balance sheet ends up in the red anyhow.

Although work with migrants is a clear priority for Jesuits worldwide, it is not the only work we do, so that we still need our retreat houses for our other work.

Yet, all the correspondents seem to have missed or side-stepped the main point of my article: I clearly said we agree that there is no solution to the migration problem without real burden sharing with bigger states, but this must not lead us to forget the present detention policy. After five years of detaining all migrants who arrive in boats, we believe Malta should step back and ask herself whether there are alternatives to detention that would be more effective in achieving the original aims of the decision to detain, and that are less in contradiction with our human rights obligations.

Our "moderation" is leading us to accept as normal what is in fact unacceptable: the lengthy detention of children and other vulnerable persons, high levels of arbitrariness within the detention centres and living conditions that have been universally criticised and which are a blot on our human rights record. Nobody has ever shown that detention has succeeded in keeping migrants away from our shores.