Prime Minister Joseph Muscat addressing the UN general assembly in New York yesterday evening. Photo: DOIPrime Minister Joseph Muscat has called on the international community to do more to help Malta deal with irregular immigration.
Addressing the UN general assembly in New York last night, Dr Muscat said Malta offered irregular migrants refuge and respite but it could not do this alone.
“Irregular immigration, human trafficking and modern-day slavery are everyone’s problem. And we all have to share in solving it, not only regionally but also globally,” Dr Muscat said.
Using compassionate language as he described the “suffering and loss of dignity” etched on the faces of irregular migrants who reached Malta’s shores on “rickety boats” there was no hint in Dr Muscat’s words of the Government’s threat some months ago to push back rescued migrants to Libya .
The reference to irregular migration was confined to two paragraphs of a prepared speech that focused on the UN’s millennium development goals to eradicate poverty.
Dr Muscat said it was not enough to be satisfied with fewer deaths from poverty but the new target should be to ensure these people were “truly living”.
With reference to the Mediterranean, Dr Muscat said the region had reached “boiling point” and the next conflict on scarce resources, over contested borders or even cultural offence was just waiting to happen.
He said the international community had to look with compassion towards the innocent people of Syria.
“It is a humanitarian catastrophe with no end in sight, a horrendous and indiscriminate tragedy. Each child’s death and each mother’s wail should shame us all.”
The Mediterranean basin was awash with promise, he added, but “polluted with pain and prejudice”.
“We need to stop the further descent into brutality and carnage and those responsible must be brought to international justice,” he said.
The 68th session of the UN general assembly is meeting in New York under the shadow of the Syrian crisis and the recent terrorist attack in a Kenya shopping centre by al Shabaab militants.
EU support for Malta
The European Commission is continuing to support Malta in its bid to relocate asylum seekers abroad, Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said at the first relocation forum in Brussels.
Commissioner Malmström stressed the importance of relocation as a tangible form of solidarity, as it provides immediate relief for countries facing an influx of asylum seekers.