Defenceless

Alternattiva Demokratika chairman Harry Vassallo gives his reaction to the Depasquale report on last January's Safi incidents

Just 1,600 men stand between us and a world armed to the teeth. They must be the world's bravest soldiers. Of these a very significant proportion are absorbed by the maintenance and administrative duties required of any armed force. In our case what is in fact little more than a brigade must behave like an army.

On top of that our army is also our coastguard, our navy and what air force we have. It is an indispensable backup for the police in times of internal tension such as elections, guards embassies and high security locations and provides the ceremonial panoply expected of any community claiming sovereign status.

Detaining hundreds of irregular immigrants, seeing to their needs and making sure that they do not escape has added yet another impossible burden on our minuscule army. It does nothing for morale that the niggardly supply of funds dedicated to training, maintenance and basic basics, has also been burdened with a significant new budget line.

The Depasquale report, just published, examines all this and goes far beyond the mere documentation of the events at Safi of January 13. It is the most articulate condemnation of the government's detention policy one could have hoped for. Amazingly, the report's conclusions provide a stunning twist at the end by supporting government policy.

It is a masterpiece of anti-climax. It describes horrific failings and leaves it at that. It reports crimes and does not recommend criminal proceedings. It notes perjury and does nothing about it. It describes an outstanding fiasco by our military and glosses over it as if it did not matter. It notes the collective amnesia of the AFM Commander, the Commissioner of Police and of the Assistant Commissioner of Police regarding the crucial moments involved and expresses no irritation, not even surprise. It does note that UNHCR Commissioner Manca de Nissa performed much better by preparing a written aide-memoire while the events were fresh in his mind.

The board of inquiry, apparently composed of Judge Depasquale alone, was engaged to examine the Safi incident to determine whether the use of force was justified and whether the force used was proportionate to the threat posed. It was also empowered to inquire into any matter ancillary to these events and to make recommendations thereon.

The first question did not get the silly answer it deserved. Of course the use of force was justified, the army had painted itself into a corner out of which it could exit only by the use of force. A protest had been made, the detainees refused to return to their quarters and something had to be done about it. The answer to the next question vindicates the public outrage expressed with news of the Safi incidents. Pictures of soldiers in riot gear beating the living daylights out of unarmed civilians were simply shocking. The report establishes that the force used was excessive and disproportionate.

Judge Depasquale provides us with the details. He heard 179 witnesses in 72 sessions, 39 of them detainees present at the protest. It made me cringe while reading it: The protesters had "escaped" a few metres away from their quarters and insisted on access to the press and to the visiting UNHCR Commissioner. Was it really too much to ask?

The officer at the interface during the long negotiations with the protesters was under the impression that the UNHCR Commissioner would turn up presently. He testified that he was under the impression that Manca de Nissa was somewhere in the camp at Safi already. Inevitably he must have conveyed his confidence to the protesters. More anti-climax.

Manca de Nissa had come to know of the protest almost instantly, communicated with the authorities and stood by at his office expecting to be asked to go to Safi at any moment. He was never asked to do so. The report does not identify who was responsible for this crucial failure.

It also fails utterly to examine the unfolding events from the perspective of a protester. Instead it reveals its "authoritarian" bias by being paranoid about the careful planning of the protest: how the detainees had prior notice of the UNHCR Commissioner's visit, how they planned and succeeded in taking their guards by surprise, how some of them acted as leaders in bolstering the resolve of their faltering comrades.

It fails to identify the person or persons on the outside who aided and abetted the protest in one way or another. It alludes to their shadowy existence adding mystery to a banal event. So what exactly? Every protest takes planning and organisation. It does not become evil or menacing because it succeeds. If somebody helped the detainees become visible for the first time, bully for him or her. It remains an exercise of democratic rights; civil disobedience is not necessarily a crime.

It is easy for many of us to read the Depasquale account in a key which the judge apparently fails to do himself. Sitting in the playing field separated from the press by a chain link fence meant success for all the efforts made by the detainees up to that point. As time went by one could assume that the guards would have called up reinforcements even if they were kept out of sight. The risk of dire consequences was clearly in the minds of protesters familiar with less than gentle treatment in their own countries. The situation must have been very tense.

The presence of the Commander of the Maltese armed forces, of the Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of Police heightened both the anxiety and the expectations of the protesters. Malta had sat up and taken notice of their plight, the press was there. It was a knife-edge situation. If they stood their ground they would either speak to Manca de Nissa or have the living daylights beaten out of them. The "ringleaders" told the protesters to remain "even if they killed us".

The failure to defuse the situation by allowing Manca De Nissa to speak to the protesters, the decision not to defuse the situation, is what made the use of force not only justified but inevitable. The report is oblivious to this fact. No injuries need have been sustained by anyone, no protester and no soldier need have been put at risk. That single failure was the prime cause not only of the use of force but was the occasion for the disproportionate use of force that followed.

Was it pride that led to the fall? Was it necessary to appear not to give in to demands by protesters? Was it overconfidence after the recent training overseas in riot control? What in Heaven's name prevented the persons in control from bringing Manca de Nissa to the scene? The army had something to hide: the state of the Safi camp. Did it hope to end the protest and wrap things up that way? If so, whose brainchild was this?

At some point it was decided that the protest would be dismantled by the army. C Company, trained in crowd control, would advance on the protesters while a small group of soldiers would use their cover to engage with the protesters snatching individuals away until the protest fizzled out. It was a good plan to carry out, an exercise made necessary by the primary failure: the absence of Manca de Nissa. It too failed.

Every available man in the army had been called up to Safi and rigged out in riot gear until stocks lasted. Almost none had had any riot training. They were to be used to contain the protesters while C Company proceeded with its plan. In the event they played it by ear or were given contradictory orders but nobody knows who gave them. God help them if ever they have to act under fire. God help any protestors who may face them in future. It could be me or it could be you.

C Company advanced, beating their truncheons on their shields. The explanation given for this was that the sound was intended to keep the soldiers in step and to intimidate the protesters. It is used as a standard warning to protesters to announce imminent action, to clear off. At Safi it was not only unnecessary but also counterproductive. The immigrants did not need to be intimidated. They were facing the whole Maltese army with its top brass present in the field. They also had nowhere to go: backed up against a fence facing a phalanx in riot gear and contained by the rest, they did not need to hear music from Braveheart to understand that they were in for it. Possible resistance was made to become desperate self-defence.

As it happened, they were in for much more than the army intended. Once the action started the army engaged in a free-for-all. In the few minutes that followed nobody was in charge. C Company's careful plan went to pieces because the troops assigned to contain on the wings entered the fray before them, snatching and whacking without even having the means to restrain the protesters they snatched or captured, hence the scenes of protesters held underfoot by soldiers in twos and threes. The only soldiers recognisable from the abundant photographic evidence were the ones who should not have been involved at all, the ones without facemasks.

It was the most determining element in a long series of contributory fiascos. The officers apparently failed to communicate among themselves and had failed to ensure that the men knew what their orders had been. If not, their orders were not the ones described to Judge Depasquale.

Before this, the pile of problems goes as far back as lack of funds for maintenance. One of the two trucks brought up to Safi to block the protesters' escape gave up the ghost on arrival and had to be pushed by the soldiers. The water cannon, the only one in the country, held by the SAG, had been eliminated as an option since the SAG had previously told the army that it was not to be used on the detainees. In any case, it was out of order that day. The soldiers brought in from other duties to shore up C Company had not received the necessary training, even though an effort had been made to organise other specially trained units. The plan had fizzled out because everybody had been busy elsewhere whenever training was scheduled.

The background situation described in the report is no consolation either. In reply to Judge Depasquale's enquiry why a fence with missing bits is not repaired, he was told that the army lacks funds. In another part of the report he is told that the detainees would object if the army built a wall or finished off the fence through which they appear to communicate freely with the outside world and claim to be able to take trips away from the camp at leisure.

Who is in charge of the place? What is the point of detention if the system has more holes than a sieve? Why incur all the expense to keep up the pretence of detaining people who would much prefer to earn their own living while they await a decision on the granting of legitimate status for their presence in the country?

The fact that the army is clearly aware of its inability to repair a fence or to transfer the detainees from quarters described as "unacceptable" by Judge Depasquale to new quarters, speaks volumes. The army's weakness causes fear and apprehension. It does expose soldiers to unnecessary risks. It also exposes the detainees to the risks inherent in being guarded by an army that is afraid. Furthermore it leaves the detainees in an essentially lawless environment. The report mentions, with little interest, an earlier fracas among detainees as if there were no obligation to protect the weak among them from their potential aggressors.

It echoes the question of an army officer who accompanied me on a visit to the camp: "Do you want to go inside?" His apparent surprise surprised me. Did he imagine that I had visited a zoo and would speak to people across a chain-link fence? What was this? A scene from some world-in-anarchy film? Would these people eat me or take me hostage? They wanted to talk to me just as much as I wanted to talk to them.

Thankfully, the soldiers in regular contact with the detainees are more familiar with their reality; in the main they treat them humanely and often break the rules themselves to make detainees' lives a little more comfortable. This too was documented by Judge Depasquale.

It is a comfort to me that he explored this reality further. He too witnessed the hair-raising antics of detainees heating water with live wires to keep their womenfolk warm in the flapping tents. He saw the way the detainees had rigged up lighting in the tents by twisting up single core wires and draping them across the place. Was an army in charge? He describes their food and finds it well prepared and adequate, if boring. He notes the ethnic and religious mix in "unacceptable" conditions which makes the MT Block a "bomb". Amazingly he gives his blessing to the government's detention policy.

Even more amazingly he documents and approves the fact that had it not been for journalists who witnessed and documented the events, none of all this would have come to public notice and then he endorses the government's policy to lock journalists out of the camps. He admits that, had it not been for the efforts of journalists, the situation would have remained unacceptable but hidden from view and then proceeds to let it return to unexploded bomb status.

Everything in the report describes an untenable situation. The insistence on detention in these conditions is little short of irresponsible. We have come within a whisker of having somebody killed because of the impossibility of dealing adequately with situations generated by this policy. We have been within a whisker of having the same scenes repeated ever since whether by spontaneous combustion or deliberate provocation. The government insists on sitting on the bomb described by Judge Depasquale. The question is why? It can be for no reason given so far. Nothing makes the least sense so far.

The most telling comment in the report is the excuse given for not allowing NGO representatives and legal counsel to visit the injured in hospital immediately after the incident: there was some concern that a magisterial inquiry would be instituted and the courts' orders were awaited. We are waiting still. Does the judiciary wait for a nod from the executive to do its duty? Does the army have to wait a year to carry out its own investigation? Will a court martial be instituted? Who will preside over it? Who will be charged?

The appointment of Judge Depasquale appears to have mesmerised the country's institutions. Some television journalists adopted self-censorship claiming the matter was sub judice. It never has been. No court has yet taken cognizance of this case. It is an accident that Judge Depaquale ever graced the Bench. The inquiry could have been carried out competently by a retired policeman, a retired army officer, a civil servant or a former NGO activist. It would have been far more credible if it had been carried out by a board made up of people with a combination of these professional experiences.

The incidents of January 13, 2005 remind us that we are essentially defenceless, that our continued existence as a sovereign state is wholly dependent on peace around us and on what remains today of the international rule of law. They also expose our nonchalance about the rule of law within our own territory, how our internal institutions work or fail to function.

The incidents will be worth the sacrifice made by the protesters, the unnecessary injuries suffered by them, if their lot is improved as a result and if we gain new insights to the challenges which we face far beyond the question of immigration, legal or otherwise.

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt