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Karl Schembri
More than 80 refugees freed after a year in detention ended in a bureaucratic blind alley last weekend when the police and the authorities responsible for their accommodation realised belatedly that all open centres were full up.
MaltaToday can reveal that the list of migrants set for release on Friday 5 May from detention centres was provided to the Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity in advance. But police were still in the dark on the night of their release as to where the refugees would be accommodated, forcing them to lock them up in detention again hours after making their first steps of freedom.
Interviews carried out by MaltaToday with the Sudanese refugees now being housed in army tents in an open field in Hal Far next to a scrap yard reveal the sheer panic and abysmal coordination failures by the authorities on what was meant to be their first night out of their caged tent compound after months in detention.
“On Friday evening, we packed our rugs and clothes and were taken to the police headquarters,” one the migrants explained, recounting the events of a week ago. “We were excited about being let free. Three of us were women. We were told we would be freed and housed in open centres, but once we reached the police building to be given our documents stating that we are granted humanitarian protection we found they had no idea where we would be staying.”
The migrants described scenes of confusion at the police headquarters as government officials and the police escorting them were visibly at a loss about what to do with them.
Suddenly, the officers took them back on the coaches but the migrants were not yet told they would be put back in detention. They only realised once they were back, and some of them were already bursting with anger.
“We couldn’t believe it,” another refugee said. “They realised there was no place for us for the night of our freedom, that they couldn’t house three women with 80 men, that all their open centres were full up, so we had to be locked inside again.”
A spokesperson for Minister Dolores Cristina, who is in charge of open centres, did not deny the chaos on Friday night but claimed that “Malta is currently facing an emergency”.
The refugees’ names however had been supplied to the ministry well in advance as it was standard policy to get them released after the established length of time they spent in detention.
And despite the Immigration Task Force headed by Martin Scicluna and meant to find new places of detention and accommodation for freed refugees, the new refugee camp in the middle of nowhere was not even ready to house the migrants that Friday.
It was only on Saturday afternoon that the refugees were taken to the field, at walking distance from the Lyster Barracks detention centre, to be told this was their new ‘open’ accommodation as free immigrants.
“It was another shock for us,” a Sudanese refugee said. “We didn’t want to go down the coach.”
Visited last Thursday by this newspaper, the site was still being equipped with mobile toilets, a container to serve as an office and other basic provisions. Nobody is yet in charge on site of this ‘open centre’ – open in every sense to all the elements and problems of a new, unplanned camp site.
Already in the morning the heat in the tents is stifling. By August it will be unbearable. In contrast at night, the migrants try to warm up next to a fire they light out of the tents, risking setting alight the whole area that is covered with dried grass and home to field rats and stray dogs.
“Altogether, open accommodation facilities in Malta are currently housing over 1,300 individuals,” said Marija Schranz, spokesperson for Family and Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina. “Naturally, one cannot help but admit that Malta is currently facing an emergency and that the Ministry is involved in primis persona on the frontline due to its commitment towards the accommodation of immigrants in open centres.”
Schranz however betrayed the lack of planning in admitting that speedier processing of refugee applications has resulted in quicker releases of migrants granted humanitarian protection, with no alternative accommodation found in the meantime.
“The immigrants themselves have been asking that the process for recognition of status be made quicker and this has indeed happened,” she said. “Ministerial employees continue to work arduously towards providing adequate accommodation for immigrants. However, due to the large numbers of immigrants released over the past weeks, works were halted in their tracks in order to provide them with quick accommodation. The new accommodation arrangement sees for their basic needs through the provision of portable showers, including hot water, and toilet facilities on the premises which are cleaned daily, catering for their hygienic needs. In addition, a generator provides electricity and illumination both in the tents themselves as well as throughout the surrounding site. Naturally, now that the first efforts have been made to provide their basic needs, work will continue as planned.”
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
Links: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/05/07/t9.html
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