Arbitrary detention
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has just been to Malta, and it didn’t like what it saw. Malta’s growing army of apocalyptic thinkers, on the other hand, didn’t like what the working group said, and is busy jamming cyberspace with prejudice and hysteria.
The UN working group was here not just to inspect the detention camps for illegal immigrants, but to look at all places where people are detained, including the Corradino Prison, the closed wards at Mount Carmel Hospital, and the cells at the Police HQ lock-up. It has made pronouncements which are of significant importance to Maltese citizens, but they appear to have gone right over the heads of our home-grown version of the National Front.
It has voiced its concern about the long periods which people spend on remand at Corradino, which prompted the government to go on the defensive and say that it has nothing to do with remand, which is ordered by the magistrate or judge. That’s correct, but it is also true that the government is ultimately responsible for efficiency at the law courts, and despite repeated attempts to sort things out, there has been little in terms of improvement, except where court records and the introduction of information technology systems are concerned. The working group claimed that more than 50 per cent of those held in prison are on remand rather than serving a sentence. The government insists that the real figure is much less than that: of the 431 people in prison, 131 are awaiting trial.
Another important issue which the UN working group raised was that people detained by the police for questioning are not permitted assistance by a lawyer. This is an important matter which I have written about several times, pointing out that there have been judgements by the European Court of Human Rights on the right of a person to assistance by a lawyer when in police custody. All the suspicion surrounding the case of Nicholas Azzopardi, who died at the Police HQ, would have been avoided had the government done its duty and obliged the police to introduce systems of taping interviews and not interviewing suspects without the presence of a lawyer. Tonio Borg, when he was Home Affairs minister, showed no inclination to get this done, which does not surprise me. One hopes that Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici will over-rule resistance from the police force and get this sorted out. “The absence of a lawyer during this crucial period is a significant blemish on the system,” the UN group said.
It also called on the government to introduce a parole system, and criticised the fact that Malta does not have one. The UN group obviously doesn’t know how things work in Malta: we use church and civil annulments to avoid introducing divorce, use other countries’ abortion clinics to avoid confronting the issue ourselves, and use presidential pardons to empty our prisons so that we don’t have to go to all the bother of having a proper, supervised parole system. The government has at least said, in response to this criticism, that it plans to publish soon its White Paper on Restorative Justice, which will propose a parole system.
That wasn’t all. The UN working group has shown its concern about “the high concentration of powers” given to the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs, which is responsible for the police, the prisons, the detention camps, the refugee’s commission, the prison visitors board and the Permanent Commission Against Corruption. It said that this sort of situation can lead to the perception of lack of transparency and of total control.
Malta’s Far-Right army of sofa commentators and coffee-shop thinkers ignored all this and instead homed in like vultures – but for entirely the wrong reasons – on what the UN group said about conditions in our detention camps. They aren’t called concentration camps, because of the inevitable association with World War II, yet concentration camps are precisely what they are. The UN group described the conditions at the Safi and Lyster Barracks camps as “appalling” and as detrimental to the health of those confined there. The people living in tents at Hal Far, the group said, should not be left there even for one day, let alone for several months. The situation, it said, is not in line with international human rights law. Inside one of the camps, they found an eight-year-old boy, and a man debilitated by HIV and chicken-pox on top of that, who was isolated in a cell rather than being cared for in hospital. The government’s response to this was that the child arrived “less than two weeks ago” (so that’s all right, then) and was released as soon as “he had obtained the required medical clearance”. That’s interesting. I looked after three eight-year-old boys myself at some point, and I don’t think any of them would have been capable of sorting out their medical clearance, or even of knowing they had to do so, should they have found themselves in a concentration camp in a foreign country, surrounded by bewildering hordes of strangers speaking different languages.
As for the man with HIV and chickenpox, the government responded that he “was not denied hospital treatment”. Ah, but was he offered it? Somehow, I don’t think he was given the chance to say “No, I don’t want to spend time in a nice, warm hospital bed being looked after by doctors and nurses, and would prefer to stay here in this freezing little room with no help and no proper care or treatment.”
The UN working group said that the conditions in the camps are so affecting the physical and mental health of the detainees that they are unable to understand their rights and follow up the legal process which will lead, for better or worse, to a change in their status. “People who have committed a crime have decent conditions of life in a prison cell at Corradino, but immigrants have to live in those conditions,” the group pointed out. Asylum applications are taking far too long to be processed, with some migrants still waiting even to be interviewed after six months in Malta. The so-called ‘fast track’ system is not much better. It is intended for the most vulnerable people, but still it takes up to three months to release these individuals from detention centres.
The government’s reply was that it has to achieve a balance between security and humanitarian concerns, while taking into consideration the rights of asylum seekers. It said that efforts are continuously being made to improve conditions, but that last year the system had to cope with 2,775 new arrivals, compared to 1,702 the year before.
That’s all very well, but unfortunately the government undermines its own credibility when its front man on this issue is the right-wing Tonio Borg, with his occasional pronouncements that reveal his hostility to African immigrants. What was his latest one? Oh yes, that they are damaging our social fabric. I could be very scathing and point out that there’s not much ‘social fabric’ here to damage, because for a population the size of a small town elsewhere we appear to have a disproportionate amount of violent crime, vicious murders, spouse-killing, child abuse, drug (or soap) trafficking, and the kind of social problems you’d only see on sink estates and in the worst inner-city areas in Britain. But never mind, in the world view of people like Tonio Borg and the Ten Thousand Horsemen of the Apocalypse ranting all over timesofmalta.com, one foul Maltese citizen is worth a thousand decent, well-educated people from Africa – you know, just because he’s Maltese.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Accurately described! Super article!
@DCG
Why do you call the detention of illegal immigrants arbitrary? It is the democratic government of Malta having the authority to put people who land on our islands illegally through a process of identification (which is not helped by the illegal immigrants!) so that they are either granted refugee status or sent back if possible:and don’t try to say that since the Maltese SAR crews save them they are not illegal immigrants.
[Daphne – Arbitrary detention is the operating name of the UN working group that was here to report on the situation in those places where people are kept locked up. In the case of people rescued from the sea, or who have come here through force of circumstance while heading for Italy, detention is definitely arbitrary, because they are detained for up to 18 months before the authorities investigate their case. It is a form of imprisonment without trial. They are not even being held on court-mandated remand. As for people rescued and brought in to Malta, I’m afraid that I’m going to have to disabuse you of the notion that they are illegal immigrants. If they are brought in by the armed forces, then they can’t possibly be considered to have entered the country illegally. Some commonsense would not go amiss.]
I think the situation on timesofmalta.com has become ridiculous. The usual insufferable ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ go on their persistent rants while seemingly failing to notice that the many sensible individuals who disagree with their extreme views have long given up on arguing and probably even listening to them.
I allowed myself a quick glimpse the other day – some are so narrow-minded that they do not even realise the difference between a citizen representing his/her country and a person representing the UN; and ridiculously called for the UN representative in question to take the ‘immigrants’ back to her country (Spain).
Having a forum where these ‘Horsemen’ can have their monologues would be no problem really. However English happens to be the language in use and – this forum being accessible to ALL internet users is creating a situation where anyone stumbling on timesofmalta.com (which happens much more frequently than anyone would imagine) will get the impression that Malta is a nation of racists…or are we?
Oh by the way, this is not just a spontaneous Sunday rant. I felt impelled to leave this comment after someone I know recently formed just this opinion of Maltese people after stumbling upon an article on timesofmalta.com. Giving a bad name to Maltese people, all in the name of free speech! If not moderating comments from Tom, Dick and Harry (..and Louise), maybe timesofmalta.com should consider restricting the viewing of posted comments only to registered users.
Thanks for this article
I guess a civilised nation is measured – if not by how they treat animals or prisoners – by how they treat “illegals”. The bare minimum is humane treatment and accommodation – the extra costs should be sought from more EU funds. If we expected to bear the responsibility of being an EU border state, then mainland Europeans have to share the costs.
One should note that humane accommodation does not mean others would be enticed to come. No matter how humane it may be, detention will always mean being locked up in a cage. No one wants that.
[Daphne – Yes, but lots of people can’t see that. They imagine that ‘comfortable’ captivity is something worth dying for when you’re a subhuman African, because you’re not much better than an animal.]
Good stuff, Daphne. However, ‘commensense’? Love this rock, but, how does one make ‘sense’ of such ‘common’ people?
Emanuel Muscat: Democratically elected representatives are not immune to the perpetration of unspeakable horror, so I wouldn’t take that line of defence, if I were you.
If you bothered to read between the lines – or actually read the lines themselves – you’d see that there’s a distinction between detention, arbitrary or otherwise, and the conditions in which detainees are kept. You may even realise that the word ‘conditions’ is not limited to the physical state of detainees’ place of detention, but to the actions (and inaction) to which detainess are subject, and to the powers exercised by those with control over their fate while the detainees themselves are denied a means of redress.
You appear to be pleased that immigrants are corralled and kept out of sight. You fail to realise that means your rights are corralled too. One day you may wish to exercise them and find that you are unable to do so. Where would be your sentiment then?
@Corinne Vella
So now we are seeing the return of the communists, are we, so beware!
I am willing to forgo a part of my civic liberties, no problem, but the area around the detention and the open centres should be covered by extensive CCTV coverage and broadcast on a 24 hour public TV channel to enable all Maltese to see what is happening in their own country.
My democratic rights are safeguarded by the duties of the Maltese government which was not elected by the illegal immigrants! It is my duty, and every Maltese citizen has this duty, to support our government’s efforts in dealing with the problem of illegal immigration. Look what happened in Lampedusa the other day: the illegal immigrants just broke the fences of the detention centre and went ran amok in the city centre. This has already happened in Malta and might happen again next summer. What will we do then?
[Daphne – You can always run for your life and lock up your women. 24 hour CCTV? Might as well tag them electronically and get them to wear yellow stars. And there’s no city in Lampedusa. It’s not much more than rock with some people on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampedusa%5D
I would like to comment on the fact that people detained by the police for questioning are not permitted assistance by a lawyer. First of all, from the very outset of the pre-trial proceedings, the Maltese Criminal Code offers a disadvantage to persons who are taken into police custody. The Fourth Schedule to the Police Act reads that: “The lack of observance of any the provisions of this Code will not invalidate the statement taken (during interrogation), unless such non observance nullifies the voluntariness of the statement.” Hence any evidence which is construed by the Police, even with subtle illegality (there is no watchdog at this stage!), can be presented in Court. A person in comunicado may easily be forced to make false statements – do the names Pietru Pawl Busuttil and Anthony Mifsud ring a bell? – and this may later be used as evidence at his detriment in Court. In a recent ECtHR pronouncement, Salduz v Turkey, the court further established the importance of the right to legal aid in juvenile cases. There is no provision in Maltese legislation that would give minors special treatment in offering legal aid at interrogation stage – abysmal to say the least.
Secondly, we should really be ashamed. Turkey has recently brought its criminal procedural rules in line with the rest of the EU countries (mind you, all EU countries offer legal assistance and this not just at the interrogation stage, but from the very moment that a person is taken into police custody). That means that a non-EU country is actually catching up with the EU mainstream while Malta is lagging way behind (can you believe this?). Furthermore, this implies that our criminal procedural laws/practices are not only incompatible with the ECtHR’s pronouncements but run counter to the ECHR (Convention) wording in Article 6(3)(c) and the structure of Article 6 taken as a whole.
This issue was also raised in Xarabank of the 31st October 2008 to which the Police Commissioner replied that the presence of a lawyer during interrogation could mean that the ‘solving rate’ of cases would be diminished and one must bear in mind that an unsolved case is at the detriment of the victim – convenient excuse, in my opinion. In simple terms, this blatant injustice will continue and all will be swept under the rug until…. someone with enough courage (in order to refrain from saying the ‘b’ word) will take the matter to the ECtHR.
Emanuel Muscat: I do not understand your reference to communists but I know that you are not “willing to forgo part of your civic liberties”. You are willing to deny the rights of others so that you may labour under the illusion that yours are safeguarded.
Never mind the impracticality of your dreadful suggestion. Few people can understand how awful the conditions in the camps are so your proposed 24 hour extensive CCTV coverage would probably backfire.
If you are worried about your own safety, I suggest you train those cameras on your own home, person and possessions. That would be far more effective protection that spying on somebody else.