Just over a week ago readers of The Times woke up to some truly comforting news: “Experts do not predict a riot.” The drift was that since Malta has none of the tensions found in London and such, we could look forward to many years of bliss and peace.

As it happened it took exactly three days for the experts to be proved wrong. That’s not because they’re stupid but because they were looking in the wrong place.

Actually, rather like the rest of us, they probably weren’t looking at all. Safi is after all a ‘closed’ centre. It’s designed to be a blind spot, all fenced-up and forgotten while we pretend that all’s well south ofSt Venera.

I’ve had enough of the ‘so-and-so condemn the violence’ rhetoric. I certainly don’t. Nor am I too moved by the thought of migrants throwing ‘dirty water’ at Lt Col Brian Gatt. I mean, a bunch of unarmed civilians sitting on the wrong side of the fence is not exactly the Afghanistan frontline.

I think there are situations, thankfully very few of them, that require some sort of violent behaviour. To say that all violence is ugly is to state the obvious. Of course it’s disturbing to read that some police and army personnel were injured. But it doesn’t follow that all violence is unnecessary and/or unjustified.

In the case of Safi it certainly wasn’t, for at least two reasons. The first has to do with the inherent problems of the place, the second with the lack of alternatives to burning and rioting.

But first, a reminder that the riots came at a very high cost to the migrants in detention. I’m astonished at how lightly we speak of tear gas, and this in a country where its use has become emblematic of some of the worst moments in our political history. I can hardly imagine what it must be like tobe tear gassed when you can’t even run.

It gets worse. I have it on reliable information that rubber bullets were used. I’ve had occasion to handle rubber bullets (this was at a lecture given by someone who had done research in Gaza) and they have nothing to do with bouncy castles or squiggly bath toys. They actually cause horrific pain and injuries and can even be lethal.

There were other consequences. A number of migrants are in prison as I write. The rest will have to make do with ‘controls’ that include the violation of what little private space they might have – usually a little hideaway under a mattress or so.

I’m not trying to dramatise anything. My point is that if people are prepared to risk gas, bullets, prison, and humiliating searches they probably have a set of very good reasons for doing so.

The first reason is detention itself. My reliable source also told me that the straw that brokethe camel’s back on Tuesday was just that. The real long-term cause for resentment is quite simply the fact that migrants find themselves cooped up in a hellhole for18 months.

The sages will object that these are not migrants but illegal ones. Like I care. I do understand that the law is there to be respected.

But I also know from my history lessons that ‘the law’ has often been used to justify all manner of cruelty. Witchcraft was sanctioned by law, as was slavery and the rack and the rest.

There’s no other way of putting it, detention is rubbish. It exists to dash the hopes of thousands of people by locking them up and putting them in their place.

Once they’re broken hard enough they can be released – as indeed all detainees are when the 18-month official torture is over.

I challenge anyone to give me a single rational (no jungles and savage primitives please) argument for detention. Let me spell it out: one reason why it makes sense to put decent people in a prison camp and release them after 18 months. I know there’ll be no takers.

That’s not even saying anything about the conditions of detention. The 2005 riots – much bigger than this week’s, by the way – were about the fences, the searches, the total lack of privacy, and much more. It seems nothing has changed.

I said earlier that I think the riot, with all the violence that came with it, was both necessary and justified. I have so far talked about what I think are some of the legitimate causes for resentment.

But why burn mattresses and throw stones? Why not talk like ‘civilised’ people, possibly with the help of a few placards and slogans?

Experience tells us that contrary to popular notions of innate African lawlessness, migrants in Malta are impressively well behaved. The really striking thing is that once they are released from detention they just go about their business of earning a living and having some fun. Considering the circumstances, there are very few incidents beyond the Safi barbed wire.

It’s not just that detention blocks those prospects. It also consigns hundreds of people to invisibility and lack of any reasonable form of engagement with the public sphere.

I find it scandalous that journalists are not allowed inside detention centres. (What exactly is it we’re trying to hide from ourselves?) Migrants in detention have no way of talking to the outside world.

Not that it would be too receptive. Apart from a largely-hostile public, it includes a party for which values mean separated peoplenot being allowed to remarry and another that waxes all progressive even as it talks like someone witha stick and jackboots. (AD is both the exception and a relief onthis one.)

But maybe that’s not the point. Fact is that the only way in which migrants in detention can make themselves heard – whether or not they’re right – is by burning and rioting. It’s a case of be good and be forgotten.

That’s what our politicians want and what many of us seem tosupport.

Safi had the riot it deserved.

mafalzon@hotmail.com