Women in detention are like caged animals, according to a migrant who, together with fellow Somalis, yesterday called for the policy to be changed.

“We believe our dignity has been destroyed. We came here hoping for a better future but we found ourselves in more difficulties. We were held in detention like animals in a cage. Detention was not easy,” Yasmin Abdirisak Mohamed said at San Anton Palace yesterday.

She was speaking at the launch of a publication by JRS Malta called No giving up: stories of unfinished journeys, recounting the experience of seven Somali women who spent at least a year in detention and had their initial request for asylum rejected.

Her call for an end to detention was reiterated by President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca who said asylum seekers faced uncertainly about their future. They tried to secure their rights but were instead met with “a system full of hurdles and bureaucracy”.

“Detention is also part of this reality, a reality that needs to change if we are truly committed to the protection and well-being of these vulnerable people and to concretely acknowledge their rights,” she said.

Although it was increasingly used by governments, research showed that detention had a drastic impact on health and social cost and there was no evidence that the threat of detention deterred irregular migration.

“It is time to reflect about alternatives to detention and implement them as soon as possible. It is not a crime to seek asylum and so detention must be considered as a very last resort, if at all.”

Ms Coleiro Preca said she hoped the booklet helped those in a position to make a difference understand that detention was “merely a measure to silence vulnerable voices behind its walls”.

“Hopefully, it will help show that asylum seekers are not numbers but individuals who, just like us, want peace and understanding.”

The publication provides a rare insight into the harrowing journey of female asylum seekers who often suffer sexual and gender-based violence in their countries. Some are tortured while others are raped and then accused of adultery and stoned. When they arrive in Malta they are provided services and detained in centres run predominantly by men and they end up keeping everything bottled up.

I have seen detainees try to kill themselves by hanging or drinking shampoo

The women were encouraged to speak up and eventually publish their experiences following a programme by the Jesuit Refugee Service, which started in 2013 while they were still in detention.

“The one picture I will never forget is when we were going to Libya. We were in a big truck and there were concrete blocks on top of 120 people. It collapsed and many people died. I knew them, we were in the desert together,” an entry reads.

Sadly, the tragedies do not stop at the North African border.

Speaking of detention, one woman said: “I have seen detainees try to kill themselves by hanging themselves or drinking shampoo”.

Throughout, they appeal for dignity and protection.

“While in detention, when we go to hospital we are handcuffed and people think we are criminals. People get the wrong idea about us because we are not criminals,” Ms Abdirisak Mohamed said yesterday.

Detention, she added, was harmful in many ways and the Somali women who took part in this empowering project were appealing against the detention of prospective asylum seekers.

Fellow speaker Laki Kayse Muhamud, for whom detention was the “tragedy and sorrow” of migrants, spoke about the application for asylum.

“The interview was like an exam. We were asked a lot of questions unrelated to our case, like the distance we travelled. Our country has been at war for more than 24 years and we didn’t go to school... we don’t know the distance between one village and another.”

She called for protection documentation that would allow them to plan their future because, at the moment, they lived in the Ħal Far open centre, cut off from the rest of society.

Ms Coleiro Preca insisted that Europeans were obliged to recognise the rights of refugees seeking asylum. More needed to be done to stop the tragic loss of life, she said.

“Migration policies adopted by the EU have strong links with the deaths that tragically continue to happen in the Mediterranean Sea,” she said, adding that policies intended to discourage deadly crossings had not diminished the number of asylum seekers but had only made the process more dangerous and inhumane.