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A USD1,000 ticket to safety… rammed into a ramshackle vessel along with dozens of other desperate souls on a treacherous voyage through the Mediterranean. Lost at sea. Dead – Found – Saved. The year of the migrant is an understatement for the 15,000 who make the annual crossing to the European mainland.
Some 2,000 asylum seekers from Africa and other Arab countries managed to make it to Malta in 2005. Less than half stay on, a small minority given refugee status, the majority under temporary protection, unable to go home where there lives would be in imminent danger due to ongoing wars. Many wait for months on end at detention camps hosted by army personnel and the police force until their applications for refugee status are processed by the Refugee Commission.
The 13 January beatings by army personnel at the Hal-Safi camp will remain the focal point of Malta’s detention policy as it degenerates into an untenable concentration camp of sorts, under scathing criticism by international organisations such as the Council of Europe and Amnesty International.
Eleven months after the beatings, an inquiry concluded by a retired judge, Franco Depasquale, declares the use of force in the 13 January Safi as justified but only excessive in the case of one soldier. The report’s “findings” attract criticism from the independent media, and a general silence from the public, government and the Labour opposition. The report however reveals much about Home Affairs and Justice Minister Tonio Borg’s “vindicated” detention policy: an untrained army, a criminalised society of migrants, an untenable incarceration process designed to deter illegal migration but which only serves to create misery and dehumanise immigrants who do not wish to land in Malta.
There was no revulsion to the worrying conclusions in the Depasquale inquiry. The 13 January Safi beatings generated praise by the far-right: Norman Lowell, holocaust denier and leader of the Imperium Europa salutes the army in Safi with a rally soon after the January events, and the right-wing Alleanza Nazzjonali Repubblikana came into being, and was one of the only organisations to welcome the report’s conclusions.
In 2005, migration disclosed a spirit of solidarity spurred into action only through TV charity bonanzas. But at heart, the weakness to understand the greater world around us, and the sufferings beyond this little island of 400,000, discloses the poverty of our humanity.
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