Press Conference about detention centres
This morning a group of volunteers from a number of non-governmental organisations set up a wire-fence and a few tents at the City Gate, Valletta, where they held a press conference to raise awareness about the hundreds of people who are currently being held in detention centres.
The NGOs holding this event are Moviment Graffitti, Migrants’ Solidarity Movement, Jesuit Refugee Service, Third World Group, Kopin, Moviment Azzjoni Xellug, Alternattiva Demokratika Zgħazagħ and Zminijietna .
Graffitti spokesperson Andre’ Callus, who spoke during the press conference, said that the message that they want to pass with this symbolic activity is that the detention centres are creating unnecessary suffering. He said that in Malta there are people who are spending up to 18 months locked up in these detention centres, in a very restricted space, with a limited access to medical services, only a small break each day, and a total uncertainty about their future.
Callus said, “This detention system has created a lot of suffering, and we can never blame soldiers and other people who work with the detention services. On the contrary, we understand that these people have to work in difficult conditions and a situation full of tension.”
“Detention Services are only part of an administrative system and the government can change this if it wants to. That you enter a country without documents is illegal, however not a criminal offence. Detention is not something required by Maltese law”, Callus asserted.
The Graffitti spokesperson continued by saying that detention by no means helps identifying immigrants, and that other countries also identify immigrants, but many of them do it by other means. He said that identifying immigrants can be done easier in open centres, because there would be less tension during the process.
“What is the point of keeping immigrants in a detention centre for some 18 months, when these immigrants are going to be freed all the same afterwards? What is the difference between an immigrant which is out of the detention centre and one who is being held in a detention centre? We still cannot understand this procedure”, he confessed.
On the issue of detaining immigrants lest they be criminals or terrorists, Callus said that you cannot identify criminals by any means because they have no documents and thatwhen terrorists entered in other countries, they always entered by legal means, with the necessary documents, and they always had enough resources not to endanger their life by crossing the sea in a small boat.
“Detention is unnecessary and unjust” said Callus and then he followed by saying that during the time government keeps up this practice of detention, it must at least reduce the time of the immigrants’ confinement, and to better the conditions in these detention centres. Callus also proposed that vulnerable groups like children, women and people who suffered greatly during their journey at sea, should be identified quickly and not held up in detention centres.
Two immigrants also spoke during this press conference. During the short speech of the first one, a Maltese man interrupted him and started telling everyone to ask him how he entered in Malta. A short quarrel ensued between two volunteers and this man, with the volunteers insisting that he should let the immigrant speak, and the man ending up in verbally attacking one of the volunteers in a personal way. The bitter exchange of words ended after a few seconds.
Adel, the second migrant who spoke, said that immigrants couldn’t get any documents because some of the countries they come from have been in wars over twenty years, and that they came illegally because that is the only way that they can travel just to be protected from being killed. He also said that life in a detention centre is very difficult and that it violates human rights especially by taking an immigrant’s freedom away.
Other points which were mentioned during the press conference were that keeping a detention centre is expensive and that other systems are less costly because you do not need a lot of security, and also these alternative systems create less tension. In Malta detention centres are creating a lot of tension: tension in Maltese society because it gives the impression that these immigrant people are criminals and dangerous, were they are even taken to hospital accompanied by a soldier, as well as among the immigrants who live in the dreadful conditions of a detention centre. Detention is far worse than prision because you can never say when you are going to be released. It was also said that detention centres were neither good for the immigrants nor beneficial in any way to the Maltese.
The volunteers will be staying at the City Gate the whole day, distributing information to people about the dire conditions of detention centres, and also sleeping there overnight in conditions similar to those found in detention centres in a symbolic gesture to show solidarity with the migrants still being held in such centres.