Journalists welcome new openness on detention centres

The Journalists' Committee has welcomed the decision by Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmel Mifsud Bonnici to open migrants' detention centres to journalists.

Committee chairman Karl Schembri said this was a positive development for journalists in Malta and recalled the role of the Journalists' Committee in calling for open access to detention centres.

The committee welcomed the reversal of policy, especially after having stressed this point in its proposals to the political parties ahead of the election and in its later meeting with Parliamentary Secretary for Public Dialogue Chris Said.

The new policy is a step forward for transparency since previously there was no way of independently corroborating the government's declarations that asylum seekers in detention were being kept in dignified conditions, Mr Schembri said.