[attach id=266227 size="medium"]Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said: “People act in line with the action taken by country’s leadership.” Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi[/attach]
The Government was in panic mode on migration, its actions reflected in the level of xenophobia and racism witnessed in recent days, Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said yesterday.
He said the latest decisions taken by the Government embarrassed the country bringing it into disrepute.
Speaking on the party’s radio station, Dr Busuttil said: “People act in line with the action taken by country’s leadership. If the leadership went into panic mode, people will act that way. The decisions taken were immature and show that (Prime Minister) Joseph Muscat is inexperienced and not yet ready to lead the country.”
He said successive PN governments had always insisted that the EU should do more to help Malta and the country had received more than €100 million to help monitor its shores.
If the leadership went into panic mode, people will act that way
“Threatening people will not get us anywhere,” he said, referring to Dr Muscat’s statement that Malta was considering all options, including repatriation and the use of the veto.
He said the migrants kept coming but what was different now was that the people were divided and there was a worrying level of xenophobia, if not racism.
Dr Busuttil said the Nationalist government’s decision in 2002 to repatriate a group of Eritrean migrants was different from what was about to happen last week.
The Eritreans, he said, had been in Malta for some time and they had been given the opportunity to apply for asylum. Somali migrants were about to be repatriated last week without even being a chance to apply for asylum, he noted.
“And if, for argument’s sake, what happened in 2002 was a mistake, surely repeating it would have been worse,” he said.
On his support of an agreement that had been struck between Italy and Libya on a push-back policy, Dr Busuttil said that, in this case too, the Labour propaganda was distorting the picture.
He said Italy had used its agreement wrongly by resorting to push-backs without giving the migrants the chance to apply for asylum and the European Court in fact ruled that that violated human rights.
Dr Busuttil said that short- and long-term solutions for migration needed to be discussed.
The long-term solution was to have Somalia recover so that people no longer felt the need to leave. The shorter-term one was for the EU to help Libya become a functioning democracy.
The EU should cooperate with Libya to stand on its feet. It would not happen overnight but it was something that could happen now that the North African country was emerging from the Gaddafi era, he said.
In a reaction, the Government said Dr Busuttil was correct to say that the deportation of the Eritreans was different from what happened last week.
The Eritreans had in fact been sent back to their country, and, according to media reports, they were tortured on their return.
In last week’s case, the Government had not excluded anything in order to put the issue on the European agenda after years of political failure.
‘No partisan politics’
Partisan politics should be left out of the migration issue, according to Foreign Affairs Minister George Vella, who accused Nationalist MEP David Casa of “dirtying” Malta’s international reputation.
Speaking during an interview on Labour Party radio station One yesterday, Dr Vella said the situation required the country to act collectively in the “national interest”.
Dr Vella insisted that the Government had not actually repatriated any migrants, drawing comparisons to a group of 220 Somali and Eritrean refugees who had been badly tortured after being deported to Eritrea by a Nationalist government in 2002. “We just wanted to send a message to the EU that we need more help,” Dr Vella said.
He said the island’s small size imposed limitations on the amount of migrants that could be accommodated.
“It’s not because we are unkind, we just have limitations,” he said.
Referring to a written declaration by Mr Casa, calling on MEPs to condemn the deportation of refugees from Malta, Dr Vella said that “when the Labour Party was in Opposition we never tarnished Malta’s reputation like he has done”.