As the influx of illegal immigrants continues unabated, the Peace Laboratory has embarked on a project to provide more shelter to asylum seekers on its grounds in Ħal Far.
The Peace Lab, situated not far from the open centre for immigrants also known as Tent City, has brought over five mobile homes from Italy and entrusted local volunteers with their assembly.
The Peace Lab already accommodates 35 asylum seekers and the new abodes will increase capacity to 50, with the aim being to eventually house up to 100.
Director Fr Dionysius Mintoff said another goal was to make the place available to other NGOs, both local and international, which share similar ideals. He invited interested parties not only to share facilities and resources but also experiences, projects and ideas.
Referring to the words of Jesus Christ in a passage in the Gospel - "I was a stranger and you welcomed me" (Matthew 25: 36) - Fr Mintoff said common reactions to the immigrants arriving in Malta suggested that a lot of Maltese Catholics failed to understand the importance of these words.
"Some harbour exclusion sentiments, if not outright racism. Others consider the hospitality Jesus enjoins a mere discretion; an option one may follow, but which is not necessary to the leading of a good Christian life. They might believe that these words do not apply to us here and now, but to other people, places or times".
Fr Mintoff said that an organisation which managed to read the signs of the times regarding the arrival of immigrants in Malta was the John XXIII Peace Laboratory.
He explained that when Malta started receiving the first waves of migrants, the Peace Lab considered the new situation in the light of its perennial principles and values. Rather than giving in to hysteria or ignoring the changing times, as countless religious and secular organisations had done, it decided to step in. Peace Lab activists started visiting the detention centres, seeking not only to help those locked inside but also to make the outside world aware of what these people were facing. It also campaigned to have children and other vulnerable people released, sparing them the detention ordeal. It campaigned against the policy of automatic detention and undertook legal initiatives against the repatriation programmes under which, in 2002, Eritrean immigrants were sent back home only to be imprisoned and tortured on their arrival in Eritrea, Fr Mintoff said.
When immigrants started coming out of detention centres, the Peace Lab sought to provide some of them with accommodation to demonstrate that the organisation's commitment to asylum seekers did not consist of mere words.
According to Fr Mintoff, the Peace Lab's aim is not merely to provide shelter to these immigrants but to empower them and help them integrate in society and among themselves. It started organising courses in English and other skills which they would require in the labour market and elsewhere.
Integration had to be achieved without each group relinquishing their own heritage and culture, he said.
Fr Mintoff also remarked that Peace Lab activists realised that to achieve their goals it was important to take their work beyond the premises. Speakers were sent to schools to discuss racism and the immigration issues, and schools were in turn invited to visit Ħal Far and meet the immigrants housed there.
In addition, a team of doctors working on a voluntary basis, including an African doctor, Maltese doctors who had worked in Africa and other Maltese practitioners, started providing medical assistance not only at their premises in Ħal Far, but also in other open centres in the area.