Blessed are the peacemakers - September 21, 2005

As the UN marks the International Day of Peace today, it makes sense to ask ourselves what peace means for us. If peace is equal to the absence of strife, the world does not have much to celebrate, threatened as it is by terrorism and the so-called war to stamp it out, and characterised by dozens of civil conflicts.

But peace is more than a negative value: it is the outcome of efforts to actively overcome evil with good. So says the Catholic Church, which spells out non-negotiable principles as requisites for attaining peace. In a nutshell, peace in Catholic social teaching is the realisation of the dignity and rights of all. Pope John XXIII, in his encyclical Pacem in Terris (1961), defined four pillars of peace - truth, love, justice and freedom - and he taught that the road to peace lay in the defence of basic rights.

John Paul II reinforced this teaching in his messages on peace, where he called on all to promote universal solidarity: "As a member of the human family, each person becomes... a citizen of the world, with consequent duties and rights, since all human beings are united by a common origin and the same supreme destiny. The condemnation of racism... the provision of aid to displaced persons and refugees, and the mobilisation of international solidarity towards all the needy are nothing other than consistent applications of the principle of world citizenship". In this perspective, the unity binding the human race is a "more powerful reality" than distinctions borne of race, nationality or other divisions.

Peace, then, is not merely the stated aim of negotiations between warring parties in remote countries, nor is it what we will enjoy when Osama Bin Laden is finally nabbed. As former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, peace, like charity, begins at home. Each one has the duty to work for peace and for human rights. This perspective is crucially relevant for Malta because it underscores just how unacceptable our policy of arbitrary and prolonged detention of asylum seekers is.

The recently published report by the European Anti-Torture Committee (CPT) underscores how far away we are from respecting detainees' rights. In January 2004, the committee vetted the treatment of immigration detainees in Malta in the light of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The visiting delegation questioned the legal basis and reasons behind the detention of illegal immigrants - upholding refugee law which states that asylum seekers should not be penalised for illegal entry - and was severely critical of conditions in which detainees are kept:

"The establishments visited displayed... a prison-like environment, a climate of tension, a quasi-total absence of activities, a lack of regular outdoor exercise, inadequate medical/psychiatric care, a lack of information for foreign nationals concerning their situation, leading to uncertainty about their future - which for many of the detainees rendered their detention unbearable. Not surprisingly, cases of self-mutilation, suicide attempts, hunger strikes, vandalism and violence were relatively common. Such a state of affairs could well be considered as amounting to inhuman treatment."

The government denied some allegations and justified other findings of the report, citing Malta's "particular circumstances". It said careful consideration was given to remarks related to the treatment and living conditions of detainees because Malta is committed to improving them. This is commendable, however to date, more than 1,000 detainees are being kept in conditions which are still pretty much the same as described by the CPT.

Some detainees have been confined for more than a year in facilities like a steel hangar in Safi Barracks, which the CPT recommended should not be used to detain people "even for the shortest period of time". And the lack of daily regime activities criticised by the committee is still prevalent, although some individual soldiers try hard to make a difference, for example by trying to set up a library in one of the centres.

We are not talking about charity here but about legally binding obligations Malta has to respect asylum seekers' basic rights. The influx of illegal immigrants, doubtless, is a pressing problem however the fundamental rights of asylum seekers must not be trampled underfoot in the scramble to identify solutions.

If we aspire to be "peacemakers", we need to respect the rights of all in line with international law. In the words of John Paul II: "Teaching peace, there is a particularly urgent need to lead individuals and peoples to respect the international order and to respect the commitments assumed by the authorities which legitimately represent them... Accords freely signed must be honoured... The violation of this principle necessarily leads to a situation of illegality... which would not fail to have lasting negative repercussions."