Interview • November 2 2003

High times at the interior

Tonio Borg should be the left’s favourite Christian-Democrat. Here he gives MATTHEW VELLA the blessing on offering a drag on that spliff.

Does Tonio Borg sleep at night? This year he was offered the tandem job of justice and home affairs. No fair game. On one hand - a judiciary seriously hit by a devastating blow with the alleged bribing of the Chief Justice and a judge in 2002 (Borg was not Justice Minister then). On the other hand it’s the United Colours of Benetton being jettisoned from the Libyan coast and, deliberately or not deliberately, landing on the Maltese coast. Sometimes they give them some fuel, medicine, a pat on the back and ‘off you go’ (the army). Most of the times, they are kept here, for long periods of detention, comfort limited, with bored children, and much tension and aggro following thereon. Is Tonio Borg a happy man?
"It is one of the most complex and complicated portfolios," he rightly admits, and it is with obvious laughter that he says he is in fact demandingly occupied. "Before we had the interior and environment. Now we got justice and local councils (Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici is parliamentary secretary to Tonio Borg). Both are linked, especially since their legal background to both subjects brings them together.
"Never a dull moment in the home affairs office," he quips, "there’s always something cropping up…prisons, lands, the joint office, police… I guess at least the advantage is that it is not a monotonous occupation. You’re always on the go."
And of course there’s the immigration question. For Europe it’s been one of the most gruelling conundrums this last year. In Malta the asylum scenario (one Refugee Commission composed of a handful of part-timers, hundreds of immigrants locked up in army compounds, children still waiting for some charitable Church school to take them in, one hour of football allowed every day) has really put the problem into perspective for the nation and the rest of the EU.
When it started looking good for Tonio Borg in 2003, as silence rested on the ebbing waves with no shallops in sight carrying destitute émigrés, it actually seemed that the excruciating pains of detention for the asylum seekers had worked. Word had magically got magically around down in the Eritrean streets. Come the day the government boasts about its detention regime, and right enough another boatful lands in some southern tip of the island.
"Certainly Malta has adopted a hard line with regards to illegal immigration, with those who do not deserve to be protected. With those who deserve to be protected, Malta has been more generous than other European countries. A full 40 percent of those who have arrived in Malta were given either refugee status or humanitarian status. I gather that around 300 have been given humanitarian status, whilst 60 given refugee status. If you had to compare us with Europe, we are not being as hard with the cases presented in front of the Refugee Commission.
"However if the asylum seeker has no case, if the case has been refused by the Refugee Commission, and failed to be re-evaluated on Appeal, we cannot accommodate them. I really do feel for their situations and sometimes I do pass from my own crises to think of those who must have spent all that money to come till here, maybe even crossed a whole desert to get to the departure point. I’m not here to act as a charitable institution, but to govern.
"For the first time in Malta, with me as minister, we introduced the law that recognised refugees, with rights and obligations, including the right to work and relief. But those who are not refugees or who do not deserve humanitarian status have to be kept in detention until repatriation.
"You ask me: should you boast that detention is a deterrent? The figures clearly show a substantial decrease in illegal immigration from last year. We could have been lucky, maybe the word has spread around, maybe the traffickers are taking a different route. In 2002, 1,686 immigrants came to Malta in the whole year. Until this week, including the boatful of 45 which has recently arrived, the figure for this year has been of 245."
The figure excludes the 148 migrants sent back to Malta on their way to being repatriated from Italy. In actual fact, the Armed Forces intercepted the boatful on its arduous voyage to the Sicilian mainland, but the migrants did not want to be towed to Malta, so the AFM gave them a couple of energy bars and saw them off. The Italians were clearly not chuffed with the gesture and soon enough, the 148 were back on the island, this time as transit passengers on their way back home.
"We have an agreement on repatriation with the Italian government, but it has, so far, never been used. The 148 migrants were not sent back under the conditions of that agreement, because the agreement stipulates that for us to be obliged to take migrants from Italy, these would have to either have been departed from Maltese territory or its internal waters, and not its territorial waters, and proceeded directly to Italy. Additionally, they would have to be arrested within 40 days, preventing the chances of having year-old immigrants being sent to Malta from Italy.
"In this case, we were not obliged to accept them since the migrants had not left our internal waters. However, when they told us that there had been human traffickers arrested amongst them, we did not want to give the impression that we were helping illegal immigration. We had ascertained ourselves that these were Egyptian, since we have excellent relations with Egypt in terms of taking back immigrants, so we accepted them and these stayed in Malta only for a week."
Repatriation naturally results as the most expensive of costs for the state. Air tickets do not come at specially-reduced prices. When migrants arrive, they never carry their documents, thereby complicating the process of having to determine their nationality and deciding on their cases for refugee or humanitarian, status. The process, with detention even extending to several months until the Refugee Commission researches and decides its case, notches up the bill.
I ask Borg why the Refugee Commission is manned by a small number of people who are not even full-timers. "We are still learning. The Commission was set up in 2001. Not everyone understands about the subject. You need to have people trained in determining the validity of a case for refugee status. You need to have people who will not be too hard in allowing refugee status, and nor too liberal to be hoodwinked as soon as the applicants start crying and telling tales. They have tactics to understand what nationality the applicants are really from through certain questions they ask, with regards geography for example.
"We recently took a decision to increase human resources. If the rate of immigration remains low, the applications will be processed much quicker. The Refugee Commissioner said they are already processing July’s arrivals’ applications. So 2002’s arrivals have already been interviewed."
The visit by the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles, earlier this week has, however, sealed the issue of the inhumanity of Malta’s hard-line approach to illegal immigration. Describing the immigration centres, and makeshift camps as "shocking," Gil-Robles confirmed what the Ombudsman had found in his 2002 report: the unprepared and ill-equipped state of the Maltese islands to take on such large numbers of immigrants arriving all at once.
"The ideal situation would be to have one centre, with a small number of detainees, in the best conditions possible. We have not yet achieved that ideal situation. But we cannot say that these people are living in some sort of pigsty." [Dr Borg here speaks a week prior to the arrival of Gil-Robles in Malta].
"The emergency arrivals prompted the deployment of premises which were inadequate for these purposes, but nothing else could be done. The Hal-Far centre was expected to accommodate 100 people. The year it opened 1,680 arrived. But you may appreciate the creation of the Hal-Far open centre, which accommodates people who have been given some form of protection. These are so many that we could not take them all in. Before we could trust them in the hands of an NGO. Only one NGO offers accommodation to immigrants, and this is the Kummissjoni Emigranti, of Mgr Philip Calleja, and the congregations which assist him. It is a fact that the other NGOs do not offer to take on some of those given refugee status."
Away from the subject of immigration, Tonio Borg reveals that one of his previous statements on the clarification of drug trafficking is reaching fruition. As he himself states, he is in favour of more reason in today’s drug laws. He amended the laws, in many respects a favourable step forward, although never going the whole hog, which stipulated that those entering the island with even the smallest amounts of drugs should directly face prison as a punishment, to one which did not necessarily demand automatic imprisonment.
"Not every instance of trafficking is indeed grave. There is so much hysteria stoked up on the matter by certain parts of the media, although your newspaper has been consistent on this issue, that we need the collective effort of the nation without any politicisation of the issue. We have to carry a distinction between some 17-year old who shared drugs with their partner and someone who smuggled over a kilo into the island, particularly in respect of those sixteen-year olds who have ended up in jail. Is all trafficking the same? The time has come to make a distinction between sharing and trafficking and a distinction between the victim and the ones who are plying profits. If the law is producing these illogical results, we have to amend it. And I am ready to amend it, as long as it is sensible and the result of a collective effort between the state and the NGOs. There’s a committee presided by the President of the Republic discussing this matter, and this is an excellent occasion to take on board the proposals of this committee and present them to the Cabinet."
Tonio Borg breaks into a knowing smile the minute I mention the fact that Fenech Adami will not be the next leader of the PN come the next general elections. His name has been bandied about as a possible leadership contender.
"I will answer you the same way I answered your editor two years ago. If someone is mentioning my name I should be flattered because it means that I could be right for that position. To tell you the truth I haven’t thought much about it and I cannot say that I am particularly attracted to the proposal. One sees the way matters
develop."