Broken China

A stand-off with Italy, an embassy in China at the centre of allegations of providing ‘easy visas’, and a European Union that does not care less about our immigration problems. Foreign Minister Michael Frendo has much to think about and act upon in the coming days, as he admits in this interview

Just in the wake of a stand-off with Italy, I find myself sitting face to face with Foreign Minister Michael Frendo at the ministry, inside his office, right under an ornate chandelier donated by the Italians when we got our independence 40 years ago.
Perhaps it is not the right time to sit underneath it, I tell him, and he seems to appreciate the black humour as he jokingly inches slightly away from under it.
It has been a long week for Frendo. The death of six Chinese immigrants on Sicilian shores and the almost certain probability that they left from Malta put the country at the receiving end of Italy’s outrage.
Italian prosecutor Domenico Platania has strongly accused the Maltese government of lack of co-operation on immigration – “the problem is not juridical but political,” he said – and the Italian ambassador here, Alvise Memmo, was equally critical.
Isn’t this an eruption of the Italians’ frustration at Malta’s complacency on illegal immigration?
“I think it’s a sign of frustration at the immigration issue, which we share with them,” Frendo says. “I think that actually Platania went a little bit overboard. Actually what he said is untrue, he said lies. He said that they requested extraditions and they weren’t granted to them when in fact extraditions took place and I’m informed that there are no requests for extraditions. What is very clear to me is that Malta and Italy must work together all the time on this issue, because we are the two states that are actually at the sharpest end of this problem.”
Frendo makes it clear that despite the negative media coverage given to Malta by the Italian press over the last week, “our relations have not degenerated”.
“This declaration was made by the judicial authority, not by the political authority. If this were made by (Italian Interior Minister) Giuseppe Pisanu, I would obviously tell you that they had degenerated; if they were made by (Foreign Minister) Gianfranco Fini I would tell you the same. But these were declarations made by a member of the judiciary, who has full independence to operate and to speak out. So we have tackled it, we’ve spoken to the Italians and I don’t think there is any major rift between Malta and Italy.”
To his Note Verbale, in which he asked Platania to retract his declarations, Frendo has not yet received any reply, nor was he contacted by Fini.
“There was no need for me to speak to Fini, and obviously Fini felt no need to speak to me. We know each other very well because we spent 18 months next to each other at the European Convention, so if there is any need we just pick up the phone and speak to each other. And that is why I tell you it’s not at the highest level as suggested by the Italian newspapers. Of course we don’t like to have this sort of situations. I think we needed to send that Note Verbale because we needed to assert that Malta actually has always been collaborating, politically and juridically. It was very incorrect of Platania to say that.”
Be that as it may, the whole incident has left reverberations here as well as thousands of miles away, specifically in Beijing, in our embassy there. All visas to Chinese nationals have been suspended and the diplomatic staff are under police investigation – specifically Ambassador Saviour Gauci and Consul Joseph Pirotta. They will remain here “for as long as necessary”.
In reality, they have been under investigation since last December, when press reports suggested irregularities in the issuing of visas to Chinese students and Labour MP Leo Brincat raised the matter in Parliament.
In their inconclusive conclusion, police investigators said there was “no foul play” so far, although they admitted that they needed to investigate further.
“Actually the investigation is still going on, it’s not closed, although we did ask the police to send us an interim report and that was the result which we published then, that at that stage they did not establish any wrongdoing,” the minister says. “Then when there were further reports in the press I said ‘please also look into this in the course of your investigations’. Obviously it is my duty as a minister to ensure that we investigate such matters seriously, and I thought it was best to ask the police as an independent authority to do this rather than do this internally.”
Frendo says the visa process involves both the embassy and immigration police – the latter having the final say on who enters Malta following an initial screening by the former.
In fact, 20 per cent of last year’s applications sent by the embassy following screening were refused, while this year the police refused 50 per cent of visa applications from China. Doesn’t that show that screening is lax?
“No, because screening is not carried out by the embassy only. The interviews are held in Beijing, the applications are then sent to the police, and the police are part of the screening process, so they can refuse visas. I wouldn’t know why they are refused, and that’s how it should be. That’s how our system works, and I don’t see the embassy separate from the police, or the police separate from the embassy – it’s one process – and I think we need to establish some other facts before saying there is laxness or our credibility has been irretrievably dented.”
Frendo makes it clear that he will be taking some important decisions about the China embassy beyond the outcome of police investigations.
“I’m still looking at the situation because it is also my duty to ensure that the operations of any embassy are operations in which there is full credibility and faith of public opinion,” he says. “So I am also looking at this issue not simply in the way the police would have to look at it. It is also my responsibility to ensure that the credibility of our embassy in Beijing is a matter which is under my custody. This is something which I am very actively concerned about; it’s very high in my considerations.”
Is he considering changing staff there?
“If there were concrete facts on which I would feel that the actual confidence of the operation of the embassy has been irretrievably prejudiced then I will take all action that is necessary,” he says.
Isn’t that the case already?
“I don’t have the concrete fact yet. In my view some concrete fact has yet to be established. Certainly the credibility has been dented but I must act on what is concrete, so I’m waiting for some other things to develop from the police. If they develop and we would have a concrete basis then I will certainly act.”
The “concrete fact”, it turns out, is whether the immigrants landing on Sicilian shores had actually left from Malta.
“If we can show concretely that we had, not as a one-off, but more than that, a situation where people came here to study English and did not study English but were actually taken to another country, that is enough for me.”
And there are another 46 immigrants in Sicily which the Italians want to repatriate here and about which the government insists there is insufficient proof they left from here. Aren’t we just playing difficult? From where else could they have left?
“Well if you take it in that way then you will accept anybody who says he left from Malta,” Frendo says. “As a state we have our responsibilities too, we need to ascertain things, and I think it’s a good thing that we do this. This is why we asked for the photographs. Now the photographs themselves would pose probably a bit of a problem as well, in so far as the pose for the photo may be different from the visas. I know this is being looked at and this is something which is factually important for me, because we’re not talking of a one-off, we’re talking about a number, a significant number, and we’re talking about two batches. And it is very important for me, or rather for the police, to establish whether there is a clear indication that they left from Malta. This is very important for all my subsequent considerations.”
The problems of immigration are, of course, beyond the powers of our island-republic and Frendo says Europe has to be much more involved.
“We would certainly like to see more solidarity,” he says. “The real problem is development. Illegal immigrants are people who have lost hope of improving their lot in their country, in their own village, and they think there is this Promised Land, which is Europe, and they want to get to it so they can live a better life. That problem needs to be tackled very seriously. You cannot just do the policing but you also need to address the development issue, but you realise that development is a longer term issue. The EU actually is the largest donor in the world, in development terms, it far exceeds the US. So Europe is very committed to this.”
I tell him that our enormous search and rescue region is only serving the Italians, who just dump on us every immigrant passing through.
“Well maybe that’s a little bit strong. I really don’t see this as an adversarial situation with Italy. I strongly believe that Malta and Italy are one on this issue and really need to collaborate together to control it. We’ve also spoken with the Libyans on this, and they are also concerned. They’re awaiting patrol boats from Italy and it will give them a greater capacity to control this. They think they might have between 1 and 2 million immigrants themselves. They are very worried about this.”
He tells me he is about to appoint a special envoy on immigration issues.
“I’m not in a position to divulge names at this stage but his or her remit would be to actually look at immigration issues and focus on agreements that we have done and need to do, to look holistically and determine the action that we need to take on the diplomatic front so that we can complement the work that is being done by the interior ministry,” he says.
On the European front, Frendo says he has a “very good” working relationship with the Permanent Representative to the EU, Richard Cachia Caruana.
“He reports to me, like any other ambassador,” he says. “We are learning the ropes in the EU, we still have some way to go.”
On Malta’s Objective 1 funding status, there should be some developments soon, Frendo says, although he reiterates that the government’s stance is “very clear”.
“We are not in a position to accept a situation where we are phased out before we are phased in,” he says. “Therefore we expect that Malta gets Objective 1 status. It will be a question of political lobbying with member states, we’ll go the whole hog in doing that.”
Meanwhile he intends going on with his rationalisation plan, closing down useless embassies opened under Fenech Adami in what is a veritable U-turn. How did he convince Gonzi to do this?
“Well that is a really loaded question,” he says laughing loudly. “So loaded I don’t know… I mean it is full of your own opinion rather than mine. I don’t think it is a question of useless embassies or wrong choices; it’s a question of somebody coming in with a vision of how the foreign ministry can function. It relates, to a large extent, to how we’re looking at it now, post-membership. Now we are in, we are a member state, we have to look at how best we can rationalise our resources. When you’re not yet in, you’re also looking at other considerations. So U-turn or no U-turn, it is from that point of view that I’ve taken it.
“I think there will be more rationalisation coming up, not major, but simply cost-cutting in areas where it makes sense. It doesn’t mean that this money won’t be reallocated to new embassies or to strengthen existing ones, because I think that we should be looking now at having a stronger presence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.”