Malta’s detention regime made it to the news once more in recent weeks, after the publication of two reports highlighting the physical conditions in the facilities at China House and Safi Barracks.
The first is a report by the board set up by the government to monitor conditions in detention and the other is the AIDA report, published by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, a Brussels-based NGO, and compiled by Aditus, a human rights organisation that provides legal assistance in detention.
The Detention Service Agency (DSA), predictably, refuted the claims made in the AIDA report, highlighting refurbishment works conducted since 2020. The improvements cited included the building of two new accommodation blocks and a clinic and the installation of ‘vandal proof utilities’, new sanitary facilities, new apertures and a comprehensive CCTV system in all areas.
While not disputing the assertion that refurbishment works have taken place, it is clear from the report prepared by the Monitoring Board for Detained Persons that, at the end of 2022, a mere five months ago, some areas of the centre were still in need of urgent refurbishment.
Block A in Safi Barracks was selected for special mention, with the room used for distribution of food supplies described as “inadequate and totally unhygienic”. Equally worrying, the report highlights worsening staffing shortages, which impact the DSA’s ability to ensure that the rights of detained persons are safeguarded at all times.
The board’s reports for both 2021 and 2022 clearly indicate that detained asylum seekers, who are often deprived of their liberty for months on end, do not have adequate access to the open air or the opportunity to engage in recreational or education activities – indeed, in any activity other than watching television.
The total lack of a complaints’ mechanism, much less one which guarantees confidentiality, independent investigation of complaints and protection of complainants from retribution, was also highlighted two years in a row.
It bears mentioning that all these concerns have been reiterated by human rights monitors countless times before. The Council of Europe Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has raised the poor conditions and lack of organised activities in every one of the six reports published since 2004.
Following her visit to Malta in 2021, the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner found that “the overall detention conditions and regimes for asylum seekers and migrants were verging on institutional mass neglect” in spite of the improvements since 2020.
That the people deprived of their liberty in these conditions include unaccompanied children as well as men and women who reached Malta after a harrowing and often traumatic journey, through countries where many experienced detention in terrible conditions, exploitation, abuse, rape and torture, makes the situation immeasurably worse.
One young man from Ghana described his experience in detention as ‘the dark side of the world, the starvation of the soul’- Katrine Camilleri
If working in detention has convinced me of anything, it is that it is impossible for those of us who have never experienced deprivation of liberty to understand just how painful and debilitating it is.
Many years ago, one young man from Ghana described his experience in detention as “the dark side of the world, the starvation of the soul”.
Today, if anything, the experience has been made even harder, as Malta’s detention regime becomes ever more punitive, restrictive, and security-oriented, and singularly focused on securing return.
Rules in place since 2021 deny NGOs and community organisations the possibility to visit detention centres to organise activities and provide information and other services. The only service external organisations can provide in detention today is individual legal assistance and even this is subject to extremely restrictive rules.
This is beyond heartbreaking as NGOs and community organisations are one of the few sources of support for newly arrived asylum seekers, providing a listening ear and companionship, which can help to temper the isolation and loneliness of detention.
Beyond social support, the regular presence of visitors provides a measure of protection from abuse. It also allows for the development of relationships of trust and the identification of needs which might otherwise go unnoticed
Seen in this light, the prohibition on visits is cruel. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet, in spite of the suffering detention causes and the unrelentingly negative reviews, little seems to change.
It is often said that you can judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. I would argue that the same holds true for a nation.
The reports about detention, which give a glimpse of the suffering behind the walls and barbed wire of our detention centres, speak volumes not only about the government’s commitment to human rights but also about ours. In the words of Bryan Stevenson, “we are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated… the absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community”.
The deafening silence, which greets each new report on our abysmal detention regime is our collective responsibility, just as it is to ensure that things change.
Katrine Camilleri is director of JRS.