Medecins Sans Frontiers and the detention camps
Published:
March 11, 2009 at 8:34pm
Medicins Sans Frontier has given notice of a press conference this Friday at 10.30am at the Hotel Phoenicia. It will explain its work in the detention camps for irregular immigrants and asylum-seekers over the last six months. Medecins Sans Frontiers will also give what it describes as “the critical points” which this week left the organisation with no choice but to suspend its work in the camps.
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Disgusted as I am by the Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho’s attitude I cannot really say that I am unduly surprised because similar anomalies have, unfortunately, occurred closer to our shores.
A few years ago the Catholic Church committed what I consider to be similar serious anomalies in Italy:
There (in December 2006) the Catholic Church denied a religious funeral for the paralyzed Italian author Piergiorgio Welby who died after a doctor disconnected his respirator at Welby’s request because Welby had – understandably in view of his particular health circumstances – repeatedly voiced his wish to end his life (or, more precisely, his wish to merely refuse to receive further futile artificial life support treatment) which is against Church doctrine.
However, a mere nine months later ( September 2007) the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti – a man known to have been unfaithful to his wife and actually divorced her to marry his mistress – was awarded a full Christian funeral at Modena cathedral. At the tenor’s grand funeral Archbishop Benito Cocchi read a message of condolence from Pope Benedict. In it, the pope said Pavarotti had “honored the divine gift of music through his extraordinary interpretative talent.”
Pavarotti’s white maple casket was covered in sunflowers and laid before the altar.
Now Pavarotti was definitely a mesmerizing singer and certainly honoured his divine gift of music. But are not adultery and divorce also against Roman Catholic doctrine?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090314/local/le-figaro-describes-migrants-life-in-malta
I think I read about similar situations (albeit worse) happening in the Second World War in Germany. Daphne, will you still defend our Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici now? Will we see our first Maltese facing the war crimes commission?
[Daphne – Are we at war? I hadn’t noticed.]
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: “Wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including… wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, …taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”
So yes, these are war crimes and Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici cannot claim ignorance, he is ultimately responsible. Europe is watching these concentration camps, mark my words, the atrocities in these camps will go down in our history, and our future generations will pay the price of shame like the post-war Germans did.
[Daphne – We are not at war.]
OK, if you’re going to nitpick, true, technically they would not be classified as war crimes (unless we declare war in Somalia), let’s call it “crimes against humanity” then, happy now?
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, “are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity
@Lino Cert
I am all in favour of supporting the immigrants in Malta (and everywhere else) and far away from trivialising the situation, but for the sake of the WW2/Holocaust victims, please distinguish and read up a few facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
Even though those are ‘only’ Wikipedia facts, I have to warn you, the descriptions are hard to bear.
@ Andrea
Thank you for the link, I agree that the atrocities of the Holocaust far outweigh what is happening in the Maltese concentration camps. That is not to say, however, that we know what exactly is happening on our doorstep. It is only when some information leaks out that the extent of the torture these people are going through is revealed. A man separated from his pregnant wife. Minor siblings separated from each other. Death and disease are prevalent. Many are going insane from this psychological torture. What’s the point of all this? Malta is in the centre of a migratory route, there is nothing that will change this. Tormenting these people and putting them up for show as a deterrent to other prospective candidates is a nasty trick. There is blood on the hands of our government, and by their inaction the people of Malta will have a share of this shame for decades to come. There is no easy way out, the only way out is to fast-track the process, close the detention centres, and give incentives to enable those immigrants to integrate into Maltese life, whatever the cost to our pockets. We have many three-star hotels that are empty, and many houses that are unoccupied. With the right incentives all these people can be housed. Work schemes and teaching programs can enable them to acquire their own income. Whatever the cost, the Maltese government must act now and free these people. The EU bans us from trapping migrating birds or torturing animals. Surely it can stop us trapping humans and torturing humans.
@ Lino Cert :Now all they have to do is put a motto on entering Safi barracks: “Arbeit”.
Piergiorgio Welby was a self-proclaimed atheist and excommunicated himself from the Catholic Church; Pavarotti did not. Marianna, probably you would have been the first one to cast the first stone if divorcees were not given a church funeral.
[Daphne – It’s actually Arbeit macht frei, or Work makes you free….a perverse use of the Christian monks’ motto that work is prayer which makes you free. Piergiorgio Welby was neither a self-proclaimed atheist nor did he have himself excommunicated. That’s church propaganda.]
What a load of rubbish you write, Lino Cert. Crimes against humanity….war crime….are you for real? Have you ever heard what the Jews and others had to go through during the Holocaust, or even during the more recent genocide in ex-Yugoslavia. “Death and disease” are prevalent, you say. How so? How many of these people have died since they got here, excluding those dying from murderous attacks by their own co-detainees? What diseases are we now talking about? One does not catch HIV unless one engages in high risk activity, so I imagine that you are referring to TB? What is the source of this TB? What is the percentage incidence? Do you expect male and female detainees to be housed together? Is this done anywhere in the world, when people are being detained? Yes, separation is sad, but it is only temporary. What about the torture you speak about – elaborate, and tell us what kind of torture is actually taking place.
Yes, conditions can be better, and yes, they should be. Yes, people with TB should be isolated for a while until they are no longer infectious, so that spread will not take place (and this also applies as protection of those Maltese who take care of them). Yes, siblings should not be separated…..but for God’s sake, calling these misfortunes “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes” is totally insane! Whatever next?
Ask any Holocaust survivor if he/ she was ever served chicken and chips in Dachau or Auschwitz (although I hope our immigrants are not getting that every day), and see what they’ll tell you. And please stop exaggerating. The situation is not great, but it does not do to fill people’s brains with drivel.
@Moggy
I think you’re in denial. You cannot accept that these atrocities are going on beneath your nose and in your own country. That doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility and obligations. History will judge the Maltese people.
I think you should substantiate your allegations, Lino Cert. Accusing the Government of committing atrocities against humanity is a very serious thing.
@Moggy
“Accusing the Government of committing atrocities against humanity is a very serious thing.”
Not as serious as what one member of our government is proposing: towing boatloads of immigrants out into the open sea and leaving them to a probably horrendous fate.
Did I say that I agree with Pullicino Orlando’s proposal? I don’t. But, on the other hand, neither do I agree with you when you blow things out of proportion, as you are so plainly doing.