Detention centres stripped immigrants of their human rights, a Somali man said yesterday, as a group of people prepared to spend two days in a makeshift tent at Valletta's City Gate to show the suffering of asylum seekers.
"As a human being, I want to have basic rights... life in a detention centre is a violation of human rights," Adil Mohammed Ahmed told reporters, as he stood behind a wire barrier, similar to those surrounding detention centres.
The re-enactment of a detention centre in the Valletta entrance was meant to highlight the cramped conditions of irregular immigrants as the world marked International Migrants Day on Friday.
Mr Ahmed spent three months in a detention centre after he arrived in Malta 14 months ago.
"We could not find documents in a country where there has been fighting for 20 years. The only way was to enter illegally," he said, minutes after a Maltese man stopped in front of the demonstrators and started shouting "tell us how you entered Malta".
The 23-year-old has since been given humanitarian protection and moved to the Ħal Far open centre, but he described the conditions there as dire. He wants to help his parents and six siblings, who fled Somalia for neighbouring Kenya, but his hands are tied since he does not have a job.
Yesterday, eight organisations - Moviment Graffiti, Migrants' Solidarity Movement, Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), Third World Group, Moviment Azzjoni Xellug, Kopin, Alternattiva Demokratika Żagħżagħ and Żminijietna - joined forces to highlight the plight of immigrants, calling on the government to review its detention policy.
They said while the system was still in place, the time immigrants spend in detention should be drastically reduced, the conditions improved and vulnerable groups should not be detained.
"I always know when somebody has just been released from detention. The look in their eyes is of someone who has lost hope," Andre Callus, from Moviment Graffiti said, adding that detention was worst than a jail term because it was surrounded with uncertainty.
"Surely, detention will not deter people from landing in Malta because they do not want to come here and the detention system does not help in the identification process of undocumented migrants," Mr Callus said.
Moreover, he added, detention gave the impression that immigrants were criminals and dangerous.
In a statement, the Jesuit Refugee Service said International Migrants Day provided the opportunity to ask whether people were fully aware of the possible consequences of pushing migrants back to Libya. More than 1,400 migrants were pushed back to Libya since May.
"We believe that many of those who see this as a quick solution to the pressures that Malta is facing would think differently if they knew about the treatment that migrants face there," JRS Malta director Joseph Cassar said.
To highlight this treatment, the JRS has published a collection of testimonies of asylum seekers revealing the hardships many migrants face in Libya, which is an almost obligatory transit country for sub-Saharan Africans.
Among the stories is that of Ahmad, who described how the Libyan military left a group of migrants in the desert for four days as a punishment for being caught in the country.
In a statement, the International Organisation for Migration said greater efforts were needed beyond the Copenhagen summit to tackle the issue of environmental and climate-induced migration.