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Matthew Vella
Italian communist MEP Giusto Catania has told MaltaToday he will stand by his personal observations in his report on a visit by a European Parliament delegation to Malta’s detention centres for migrants in March.
“My observations are those of the rapporteur and it is my right as the one who is relating what we all saw, and therefore they cannot change. They are an organic part of the report,” Catania said after members from the civil liberties committee opposed the strong wording of his report.
Committee vice-president Stefano Zappalà, who was in Malta with other MEPs visiting the detention centres, disputed the factuality of the report. “Certain personal comments should be omitted,” Zappalà said, referring to the rapporteur’s description of the Safi centre as a “cage” and that the Hal Far complex’s bathrooms “are in an appalling condition and there are dead and live rats which serve as pets”.
MEP David Casa said the rapporteur had not mentioned that during the visit by MEPs, it was revealed that detainees had refused to move to a new centre.”
The delegation members have been urged to meet again and come up with a common stand by the time a final vote is taken on Catania’s report.
“There is some agreement on certain considerations but they don’t change the general tone of the report,” Catania told this newspaper. “What we saw in Malta was terrible and this report evidenced what is the example of what is unacceptable… we will change some word or phrase but the central theme will be to report and describe what we all saw.”
Catania reserved strong words for his report on the detention system for asylum seekers, saying Malta’s administrative detention was “unacceptable for a civilised country and untenable in Europe” and that the conditions in the Maltese centres were worse than others visited by the various delegations from the civil liberties committee.
He called for the centres to be closed down and to move the detained migrants to open centres instead.
“The temporary accommodation centres are legally unacceptable places… For this reason and also because such instruments have proved ineffective in combating illegal immigration and in obtaining recognition for migrants, the temporary detention centres have to be considered as unacceptable places,” Catania said.
The MEP, who on his visit had been vehemently critical of the detention centres, said Malta had to strictly apply the minimum standards directive for asylum seekers. According to Catania, the release of detainees after 12 months to have access to the labour market and vocational training were not being respected.
In comments to MaltaToday, the MEP said the European Parliament had all the power to ask the Commission for the directive to be fully implemented in Malta.
Catania’s report also noted several grave cases of inadequate conditions in the detention centres, saying women at Lyster Barracks were not given sanitary towels.
In Hal Far, he said many detainees who were ill live in the dormitories with others: “one with gout, and a Sudanese suffering from asthma, who was given an out-of-date drug, which was an Italian free sample. Those seriously ill are kept in bed in the centre with the others. In particular there was a diabetic who, since he is not being treated properly, is at risk of going blind.”
But migrants have complained of inadequate medical care. Catania said migrants told the delegation they were using eucalyptus leaves to treat headaches because of the lack of medical care, “with inadequate and very brief examinations by doctors, medicines past their sell-by date.”
According to Catania’s report, the delegation was given boxes of out-of-date drugs and that all illnesses were being treated with Panadol.
The report’s conclusions calls on the governments of member states to receive on a voluntary basis in the short term, a certain number of refugees to relieve Malta “of some of the heavy burden it currently has to bear”.
The report also reaffirmed the need to have the European Commission revise the Dublin Convention in order to take account of the specific nature of small countries such as Malta, “which have to tackle massive influxes of asylum seekers, taking into consideration the possibility of introducing mechanisms for ‘burden sharing’ between the Member States.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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