Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the international humanitarian assistance agency that pulled out of detention centres in Malta, yesterday took its case to the European stage, presenting a report to the European Parliament.
Addressing the Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, MSF spokesman Antonio Virgilio launched a scathing attack on Malta's detention policy and on conditions in the centres, describing them as "appalling" and as a "threat to human well-being".
Mr Virgilio described Maltese centres as extremely over-crowded, dirty, with not enough showers and, in one particular case, with just one toilet for as many as 55 people. Immigrants, he said, often had to urinate or even defecate in empty containers.
He laid stress on the poor medical services and criticised Malta's failure to provide adequate ones. He cited in particular the lack of pharmacies in centres and said that people with infectious diseases were often left in the same areas or rooms as other persons. In one case, a 14-year-old boy attempted suicide after having been left in detention for five months, he said.
The MSF spokesman warned that detention conditions in Malta could actually become worse.
Simon Busuttil, the only Maltese MEP present for the presentation, called on MSF to reconsider its position and reinstate its services to detention centres in Malta.
Acknowledging the agency's positive contribution to Malta's difficult detention conditions, Dr Busuttil said the agency risked falling into a contradiction when, on the one hand, it denounced conditions and, on the other, it withdrew its humanitarian support precisely when it was most needed.
The humanitarian organisation had explained its decision to quit detention centres (while still offering a service in open centres) by saying its work was being made ineffective due to the absence of pharmacies and proper facilities to isolate people with infectious diseases. It had argued that in the long run it would be supporting a hopeless situation if it remained.
Dr Busuttil yesterday acknowledged that conditions were far from satisfactory but reminded the organisation that the EP had already sent a delegation to visit centres in Malta and MEPs had seen the difficult situation for themselves.
He said that, in its presentation, MSF had failed to point out that the reason for the poor conditions was the sheer number of arriving immigrants and not the result of some political design to degrade people's dignity.
"The numbers by far exceeded Malta's capacity to provide adequate conditions. It stands to reason that if a centre is intended to host a given number of immigrants, conditions would quickly deteriorate if more immigrants arrived and had to be accommodated in the same place," Dr Busuttil said.
Unfortunately, immigrants themselves often made the situation worse as a result of riots that ended up in total destruction of furniture and fittings in centres. This made the ongoing refurbishment programme in centres virtually useless.
Dr Busuttil quoted from a recent report on The Times saying that, in the latest riot, an education centre in a detention centre was ransacked and books, a computer, a projector and other classroom equipment set on fire.
He said the answer to the prevailing conditions was not for MSF to withdraw its services or to condemn Malta but for EU countries to get their act together to manage immigration flows effectively. "To date, this had not been done."
He called on MSF to reconsider its decision to withdraw and to resume its sorely needed support services.