Government rejects Amnesty's claims

Amnesty International was not aware of the whole picture of the detention of illegal immigrants in Malta when it wrote the report criticising the way the island is dealing with illegal immigration, the government said yesterday.

The report harshly criticised the way Malta is dealing with illegal immigration alleging that the island is not respecting its international obligations when it detains migrants automatically on arrival.

When contacted, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry said Amnesty was "completely incorrect" in this regard.

"Malta has no international obligations that preclude its current detention policy for illegal immigrants and neither is it party to any international convention that rules out detaining illegal immigrants on arrival," the spokesman said.

The report refers to others compiled by NGO Médecins du Monde last year and by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) published last September. Both reports, as well as the most recent European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) one released in December, criticise the detention policy.

This explains why local NGOs were not surprised about the outcome of the Amnesty report. The head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Malta, Neil Falzon, said this was "yet another report criticising Malta's detention policy". He reiterated that UNHCR was concerned that there was an automatic detention of all people entering the island irregularly, including asylum seekers.

A spokesman for Integra Foundation, an NGO working to facilitate the integration of minority groups, and Jesuit Refugee Services director Fr Paul Pace also felt that this report said nothing new.

In a statement last night, the government said the search and rescue incidents of and May 21 and 24, 2007, occurred outside the Maltese Search and Rescue Region. In the first case, the boat was neither sinking nor in any imminent danger while in the second, due notice was given to the authorities.

As for detention, it is totally incorrect to state that at the end of last June, there were 3,000 migrants detained. The actual number at the time was 1,300. The figure quoted by Amnesty seems to have been made up of the total number of immigrants held in detention and the 1,800 people accommodated in open centres. Immigrants availing themselves of open centre facilities are free to move out as they please and cannot in any way be considered detainees.

The claims by Medicines du Monde are also false, the government said. It is not true that a pregnant woman gave birth in a detention centre. Moreover, there is no facility for solitary confinement at any of the detention centres. "It is, therefore, hard to understand how Amnesty International could condone and endorse such an unfounded allegation."