PM is pandering to the extreme right by changing rights convention - NGO

Repubblika, the rule of law NGO, has hit out at comments by Robert Abela about needing to amend the human rights convention where it involves migration.

"The prime minister of Malta is abandoning decades of domestic and international consensus and pandering to the extreme right to erode human rights," the NGO said.

It was not true that the convention, written 80 years, had expired and needed change. The prime minister's argument meant that existing rights should be removed so that is government could do what was currently considered illegal. 

Human rights were fundamental and part of human dignity, and breaching them would amount to inhumane treatment, the NGO said.

Human rights were inalienable and not a gift which a government could give or remove. They were also universal and applicable to everyone.

Repubblika said the prime minister showed 'crass ignorance' of historical fact when he claimed that the writers of the convention could not have predicted the consequences of migration, 80 years later. 

The human rights convention was written immediately after the second world war and the nazi holocaust and the authors had witnessed the consequences that resulted when governments denied rights to refugees fleeing prosecution and hardship, the NGO said. 

The convention did not create basic human rights, because the rights already existed. The convention established the legal framework for their protection.

"If Robert Abela can change the law to deny rights to the Africans, nothing will stop him from changing the law to deny rights to anyone else he does not like," the NGO said. 

It observed that Robert Abela was not the only head of government who was 'abandoning' democratic norms, and his views were matching those of the extreme right.