Confessions of an army commander

Brigadier Carmel Vassallo breaks the silence over Hal-Safi, just… In a frank interview, Vassallo pays witness the vicious circle of Malta’s detention policy which has turned human beings stuck in armybarracks into enemies

The gentle commander. It was the title of MaltaToday’s first interview held with the then newly-appointed commander of the Armed Forces of Malta, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo. At 49, Vassallo faces a questionable future. His army’s handling of a protest staged by asylum seekers at the infamous Hal-Safi barracks is under inqury. The images of the brutal handling of the protestors, at the mercy of the army’s riot squad, where an odd 20 were taken to hospital suffering grave injuries, is by far the biggest challenge that Vassallo faces at the moment in this early stages at the helm of the army.
So what about the properties of Brigadier Vassallo? Essentially, and I say this with utmost condemnation for the actions of the armed forces on the 13 January protest, this man looks to have been overwhelmed by an incident which should have never occurred. Not only in terms of the action taken with regards to the protest of 13 January, but because, even by his own admission, handling and administering a detention camp for asylum seekers should have never fallen into the army’s remit.
This is the first time that Vassallo speaks openly about what happened on the 13 January. His comments are restricted. The inquiry’s verdict is still not out. I can vouch for the fact that Vassallo looks pained, even though he will stand by his actions, at least presumably. But his demeanour, his tone, is thankfully removed from any sort of jingoistic, hawkish defensiveness.
The army has been in for some harsh criticism. In truth it deserves it. The witness by those who visit the camps, politicians and NGOs, testify to the dire conditions in which asylum seekers are kept. But I am all the more convinced that the army cannot do anything about it. Having the army take care of asylum seekers is like getting a mechanic to fry your eggs on your car engine, in the words of one NGO activist. They are destined to make a mess out of it. Help… I am a soldier in an asylum centre: get me out of here.
I have finally arrived at full circle in understanding just the basics of the Maltese immigration debate. All the more convinced, I leave the Hal-Luqa barracks in full knowledge that Tonio Borg’s detention policy has thrust two unlikely bedfellows in a den of iniquity. Stand by for problems. It had to be a horribly calculated act of force to get us speaking about the way immigration was being handled. Thank our lucky stars for the gratuitous free-for-all of 13 January – now we get serious about immigration.
So, is our brigadier conscious of what fate could reserve for his future in the army once the inquiry comes out with a verdict on his actions as commander?
“Of course I am thinking of it,” he says about the possibility that this could ultimately mean, well, the worse for him. “Do you think these are good things? But I have to wait for what the inquest delivers, and what my ministry will decide. One has to wait and see,” Vassallo says.
“I cannot really comment a lot on this given the inquest is pending. When you have somebody in your custody who does something that is not permitted, and we have had a similar previous incident which we managed to handle, this time round we couldn’t convince them from entering back into the barracks. This time they were against a fence which they could have split open and escape. The first thing I did was to close the fence from outside, using the help of the army and the police. We tried seven, eight times to get them to come in. Our officials almost managed to convince them. It was evident that there were ringleaders who were ready to do anything other than coming back in.
“We gave them all the time to speak to the press, to let them get their message through. But they refused to come back in. In a nearby camp in Hal-Safi, other asylum seekers were almost uprising, attempting to break open the fence. If that happened, the situation would have gone out of hand. We would have not been able to contain them.
“When we singled out the ringleaders, before any form of physical contact, I sent officials, even an Arab-speaking official, to try and convince them. But suddenly, everything happened all at once, many started running in an attempt to escape and others confronted the soldiers, and we had to control the situation before it went out of hand, but now I cannot comment any further. An inquest is being carried on this matter.”
His voice trails off in a tone of weariness. There is so much he can talk about, evidently. He is under fire from all sides. He may believe certain criticism to be unjustified, and try as much as he can to justify what happened on 13 January, he is compelled to break off where he cannot comment any further. A man whose life has been one in which orders are taken and executed, does not comment on policy – the army carries out orders. What else can they do?
To add to the entire post-riot commotion, the army found itself a most unwelcome champion – none other than nigger-hating, homosexual-hating, socialist-hating, all-things-democratic-hating Mr Norman Lowell, self-proclaimed leader of a disjointed pack of fascists who fear ‘africanisation’ of the Maltese islands. Lowell came out in full glory in the desolate square of the village of Hal-Safi in support of the army. Lots of anger, lots of bad publicity for the AFM.
“It would be utterly bad for us to be identified with these people. Extremes are bad, from both sides. However it’s not us who is going to keep them from speaking in public. If they happened to support the army, and I don’t even want to be ungrateful for any support, I don’t want people to identify the army with these people.
“I don’t know if army personnel were present at the rally. We cannot associate the army with these people if personnel were there. Should one identify such people like the bystanders and journalists who were also present, with those extremist groups? In the AFM there are clear instructions regarding communication with the press and the media and, on the day that Xarabank was broadcasting its programme on the Safi incidents, I wanted to avoid the temptation of those soldiers who may have wanted to air their views on TV, so I had almost everyone on stand by in Barracks.”
Vassallo somewhat accepts the verdict of a report delivered at the national conference on irregular immigration by Martin Scicluna, Din l-Art Helwa’s president and a military expert, that the army is not suited for the role of custodian of asylum seekers.
“Of course I agree. We are greatly understaffed. You find personnel who are welders or airplane ground crew who are guarding asylum seekers. Soldiers are basically trained in keeping guard. It’s one thing however guarding a building to keep people from entering, and another thing altogether to keep people who are not criminals, from escaping. Sometimes certain situations could give rise to some problems that may, in turn, create tension.
“What I have seen as unjust, is that it is not correct to pass comment on an incident in which an NGO official claimed she had seen somebody kicking an asylum seeker. Did she ever report this incident?,” he says, referring to a particular instance during the conference in which he objected to claims by a Red Cross official. His body jerks uncomfortably as he recalls his outburst during the conference.
“She talked about me not being on site at Safi barracks. Firstly I am not subject to what this person says, but I assure you that one of the places I have mostly been to since becoming commander is Hal-Safi, because there are problems. I don’t enjoy having 20 people in a camp, let alone 200 in a camp. Being there and speaking to them is the least I can do, and that is where I have been today, to try and better matters as far as possible. We never denied that conditions were below acceptable standards inside the camps.
“Definitely, this is a responsibility for which the army would be far better off not having. But we have our roles and the tasks that derive from these roles. The influx of irregular immigrants was such that the Police Corps could not handle on its own. This is a task the government has given us, and we have had to accept it.
“What I think was a mistake, and this is said in hindsight since problems cannot be foreseen, was putting these people under canvas tents and shed for months on end. But this is what we could give them, as well as housing them in barracks which previously were occupied by soldiers.”
I ask him whether he can comprehend the frustration of the asylum seeker. “Of course I do. But if a soldier is beaten up by one of them I don’t want them to thank God for it. Myself and other officials have told our personnel to expect frustration and provocation, that one of them could throw a bucket of water or that a sink is thrown out of a window, which in fact did happen.
“In the same way that I didn’t want certain people to pass comment on the army given that they are extremists,” in referral to Lowell, “it was the same with the it-torca coverage on the weapons search that it had featured,” the article that was splashed on the General Workers’ Union weekly in which hearts bled for the army, and not the other way round, where makeshift weapons, allegedly part of the search conducted in the barracks following the protest, were displayed for all to bear witness to the innate brutality of the asylum seeker.
Vassallo clarifies his stance: “Whilst it is true that the improvised weapons were all found in the accommodation areas of the asylum seekers over a period of time, the photographs of the improvised weapons as depicted in the feature may have given the impression that we were trying to justify our actions. Far from it. A number of those weapons had been found in a search following the Safi incident. What I can say is that part of the weapons found then were featured in the picture published in it-torca.”
It is Friday as we speak. Vassallo says he spent the first part of the day speaking to detainees at Hal-Safi, three hours in all. “I cannot stand the fact that they spent a night in that cold. It’s the only accommodation I can offer them.”
If people want to learn about the dire conditions at Hal-Safi, they will never see it through the newswires. Tonio Borg does not want journalists sauntering inside the camps to plaster images of the hellholes onto the papers. But you can hear what the NGOs, Labour MP Gavin Gulia, and Alternattiva Demokratika’s chairperson Harry Vassallo have to say about their experience in Hal-Safi. It is kind of shit, if you stand by their witness.
Brigadier Vassallo however also tells me, that soldiers are having a bad time – detention has turned asylum seekers against their custodians. The fact that weapons have indeed been found in the camps, shows that the detention camps are no longer worthy of the elegant title of ‘immigrant reception centre’ – it is more like Wormwood Scrubs. It seems that if you going to treat a person like a criminal, you are pretty going to get one.
“Normally our relations with them are good. I cannot forbid a soldier from answering back someone who provokes them. We really are patient with them. I don’t know what the knee-jerk reaction of somebody who is told a bad remark is going to be. It does not necessarily mean that a fight will start. That is why I was hurt at comments by an NGO – I want them to mention one example in the last three years where an asylum seeker was admitted to hospital because of a soldier who hurt him, bar that what happened on 13 January. The last uprising before January saw 15 of them being taken to hospital, when they fought between themselves.”
The interview draws to an end. When the tape-recorder is off, we speak freely of how this island’s challenges are being faced, because in this nation, everybody speaks freely at their own risk.
“We accommodated asylum seekers are best as we could. When the problem escalated and went out of proportion, we could not contain it as properly as before and it was decided to close the camps. That decision still stands,” Vassallo says.
The Safi incidents are too damning to allow any form of exoneration from responsibility. I can almost sense that once again, a politician will be allowed to smile, with guilt-free resolve, at the next general elections, when Safi will only be three years away in the remote recesses of our memories.
Poor gentle commander. Did it have to be a misjudged deployment of the riot squad to jolt this country into thinking whether we really had a serious problem at hand? It’s that giddy feeling of masochism once again.