According to Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg, Eritrean migrants were recently subjected to violence by Libyan police, leaving several of them seriously injured.
Libya denied accusations that it was mistreating the Eritreans who had been turned back at sea by Italian patrols and handed over to the Tripoli. Who is telling the truth? We may never know.
What we do know is that on May 6, 2009, for the first time in the post-war era a European state ordered its coastguard to forcibly return migrants at sea without screening them to determine whether any passengers required protection or were particularly vulnerable.
According to a Human Rights Watch report, the Italians disembarked the exhausted passengers on a dock in Tripoli where the Libyan authorities immediately apprehended and detained them.
Since then the number of African boat people arriving in Malta via Libya has gone down drastically. Before last week, not a single black migrant had landed on our shores since October. Many are of the opinion this is a statistic worth celebrating.
Why should we bother about those who fled war-torn Somalia through the Sahara only to end up incarcerated in Libya? Why should we care when African immigrants are a burden on our social security system, our soldiers, and, according to some misinformed voices, threaten our 'values'?
For too many or us, refugees and asylum seekers are a hindrance - people who should have never left their home country in the first place. Some cannot understand the concept of a refugee and refuse to acknowledge that international law actually permits them to flee their countries 'illegally'.
Several EU states have simply ignored the controversial Libya-Italy pact on immigration, the same way they failed to show solidarity with immigration-burdened states like Malta.
The so-called push-back policy promoted by this pact is a cause for concern, since such a policy can be justified only if it were applied to those who have no right to asylum. Considering that half of those reaching Italy and Malta by sea are eligible for protection, alarm bells should be ringing.
Humanitarian organisations, the Church, even former President Eddie Fenech Adami, have all warned that the push-back policy is likely to breach immigrants' fundamental human right to ask for protection. Our government should not support this, not even tacitly, even if the country is 'benefitting' from the Libya-Italy accord.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi mystified many last week when he flatly turned down calls to hold an independent inquiry into whether the army acted correctly during a rescue operation in which 27 migrants were sent back to Libya. Fifty-five Somalis rescued from a sinking dinghy last Sunday were divided into two groups while at sea - with 28 being brought to Malta and the rest taken to Libya.
The army said those who boarded the Libyan boat did so voluntarily, but the claim was disputed by migrants who spoke to The Times. A properly-conducted inquiry would have established the facts. As things stand, it seems strange that immigrants who have paid thousands of euros to take the trip, and risked their lives to flee Africa, would voluntarily board a boat back to where they came from.
However, there is little public will to establish these facts. Where immigration is concerned, many conveniently forget notions of solidarity and Christian love and instead choose to concentrate only on the burden inflicted on the country.
Yes, fewer migrants reduces problems for the army, detention centres and the taxpayer. But at what cost to human rights?