An Eritrean refugee who has been in Malta for six years accused the country of keeping the reception centres for asylum seekers in a bad condition “on purpose” to “scares off more Africans from coming to Malta.”
Recounting his experience during a news conference organised by the Jesuit Refugee Service in Brussels, 31-year old Gojtom Yosief Asmelash said the Maltese authorities kept saying they could not cope as they were overburdened even when the number of asylum seekers was low.
“They (Malta) say the same thing they're saying since I've been on the island - no matter if there are revolutions in the Arab world or not: We will take you if you come here, but we won't rescue you in international waters. We are overcrowded, the burden is too big.”
“There are 3,700 migrants now in Malta. It's a lot fewer than in previous years, the US has helped resettle a lot of refugees, France and Germany too. But still, the conditions in the detention centre are just as bad, I think they do it on purpose so people don't come,” Mr Asmelash, now working for the JRS in Malta, told the press.
Arriving in Malta in the summer of 2006, the Eritrean refugee gave details on his six-month long voyage since fleeing Eritrea
Getting to the Sudanese border wass “the most risky”, Mr Asmelash said adding that this took him five days and nights of hiding to avoid being caught by the Eritrean army.
Once in Sudan, he spent two months in a refugee camp and after receiving more money from friends back home, he crossed the Libyan desert in an overcrowded car.
After a week, he reached Ajdabiya, the first town in Libya after the desert. Mr Asmelash spent three months in Libya, getting from Benghazi to Tripoli and Az Zawiyah, where he waited for the summer to cross the Mediterranean to Malta in a boat filled with 25 people.
The Eritrean refugee said that once in Malta, he spent a year in an overcrowded detention centre before getting his refugee status. He said there were 80 people housed in two rooms but he was subsequently moved to an “open centre” while looking for a job. There, he said, the conditions were “even worse”.
“The centre was an old school with 800-900 people and 30 beds to a room”.
Mr Asmelash said that although he is now happily working with the Malta’s JRS, he feared for his future.
“If I lose my job, I would be homeless, because Maltese open centres do not take you back once you've got a job, no matter how precarious,” he said.