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Karl Schembri
Dozens of asylum seekers are believed to be still out at large after their escape from the Hal Safi compound with other inmates last week, as the situation inside detention centres has degenerated to unprecedented levels.
MaltaToday is informed that since last Tuesday’s uprisings, in which around 400 immigrants took to the streets in protest against their lengthy detention, AFM soldiers manning the detention centre have been unable to search inside the compounds and make a headcount upon the detainees’ return.
The Commander of Detention Services, Lt Col. Brian Gatt, confirmed yesterday night that an unknown number of migrants could still be on the run.
“We couldn’t make a headcount,” he said. “It could be that some who escaped didn’t return.”
He said that an unofficial estimate of around 100 missing detainees was however “exaggerated”.
So tense is the situation inside detention centres that the soldiers are not entering the detainees’ living quarters in a bid to avert further violence and riots, after they destroyed great parts of the dormitories in the protest.“It’s never been this bad,” sources said. “The handful of AFM staff can’t go in, the tension is incredible. It’s literally like going into a cage full of frustrated men.”
The Jesuit Refugee Service appealed to the government to look seriously into the reasons behind the repeated protests in the wake of Tuesday’s escape, saying they are a clear sign of deep frustration within detention centres.
Lt Col. Gatt downplayed it to “the usual group of troublemakers” who were instigating the protests.
“There is tension in just one detention centre,” he said. “It’s always the same group of people and I doubt they are bona fide refugees.”
But the consequences of a human zoo full up with detainees awaiting a decision on their application for refugee status have yet again spilled over to the streets last week, in what was the most dramatic of escapes from one of the detention centres.
Shoddily fenced and each manned by half a dozen detention services officers at a time, these centres have become the army’s nightmare as soldiers have watched helplessly at the escaping migrants.
Already four months ago, in the wake of an escape by around 100 detainees in February, AFM Commander Brig. Carmel Vassallo had warned that migrants could escape “anytime” as long as detention centres are not adequately fenced.
“As Commander AFM, my duty is to keep these immigrants in detention,” Brig. Vassallo told MaltaToday in an interview last February. “Now for how long, as a country, will we tolerate a situation in which they can escape any time they want to? Yesterday they stopped in Hal Luqa. Today, tomorrow, whenever, a group can decide to keep marching on till Valletta. What will we do then when they reach City Gate? Castille? The Palace?”
Soldiers and refugees’ NGOs alike speak of a detention system on the verge of collapse, as long drawn procedures to determine the status of asylum seekers is clearly leaving its toll among the hundreds of anxious migrants.
While the Refugee Commission and its appeals board are somehow interviewing hundreds of immigrants while the backlog gets worse with new boats reach Maltese shores everyday, documents are being held by the Home Affairs Ministry and released on the last day of the maximum detention period, heightening the frustration and anxiety reigning within the camps.
Hundreds of detainees have to wait for as long as 8 or even 10 months before they are even interviewed, JRS said, while many detainees receive a definitive rejection of their asylum application just before the 12 month period elapses, which means they can spend a further 6 months awaiting release and so hopes for freedom are dashed at the very last moment.
It is the police who have to communicate individually the result of the interviews. In the rejected cases, they have to face migrants held in the compounds for a whole year, while soldiers try to somehow keep them calm as they face more months locked up in the camps.
Lt Col. Gatt said that with the lack of trained people, only the armed forces and police could at present run the detention services.
“As a country we were unprepared for this phenomenon, so we had to take it up by necessity, whether we like it or not,” Lt Col. Gatt said. “We are learning by experience.”
Even upon the migrants’ release, soldiers and police officers often have to come up with quick solutions for their overnight accommodation in open centres as the bureaucracy leaves them with dozens of freed migrants with nowhere to live.
Last May, MaltaToday reported how more than 80 refugees freed after a year in detention ended in a bureaucratic blind alley when the police and the authorities responsible for their accommodation realised belatedly that all open centres were full up.
Although the list of migrants set for release from detention centres was provided to the Ministry for Family and Social Solidarity in advance, police were left 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.
“We couldn’t believe it,” a 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.”
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
Links:
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/05/14/t5.html
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