They took this Somali immigrant to the health centre in handcuffs and barefoot
And TVM’s now notorious website thinks that the real news is that he escaped.
The real news is obvious: that instead of doing the reasonable thing and calling a doctor to the detention centre as they do with the Corradino prisons, they make a spectacle of detained African immigrants by dragging them to crowded health centres in handcuffs. And in this case, barefoot.
I was at the Courts of Justice some weeks ago when a long row of African detainees, handcuffed to each other, were brought in by police officers. It was like a scene from Django.
While watching this disturbing scene – the police officers were not aggressive towards them, but worse than that, they spoke to them as though they were mentally deficient – I had to endure the lamentations of three quite obviously illiterate and barely educated women from some former Valletta slum, going on and on and on and on about how awful all Africans are and how if it was up to them they would just let them drown.
And because I am quite obviously Maltese and was sitting on the same bench looking at the same scene, they kept looking at me to try to involve me in their horrid and stupid conversation, expecting some facial expression from me that signified agreement. I decided it would be best all round not to let them know what I think – you can’t reason with people that pig-ignorant – and so I just stonewalled their verbal advances.
But this kind of experience really does help me understand how things came so easily to that terrible pass for the Jews in Germany in the 1930s. It always seemed very strange to me that otherwise decent and law-abiding citizens found it so easy to completely dehumanise other people on the basis of their ethnicity and fomented hatred and fear.
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http://www.tvm.com.mt/news/jahrab-mill-polyclinic-hafi-u-bil-manetti/
I am not overly pleased with anyone arriving in Malta irregularly and unannounced, but I find this very shocking.
These people are not slaves but human beings who should be treated with dignity and respect, no matter how illiterate, unconnected or destitute.
Dragging them around barefooted and in chains in public in present day Malta and in this hot weather is simply NOT ON!
All those concerned with the welfare of these human beings should be questioned to ensure that these inhumanities will not occur again and, that money is available so that they get the basic necessities and that includes decent clothing and footwear appropriate for the weather and place they are escorted to.
Money is available for basic necessities but Manwel Mallia prefers to divert that money towards defraying unavoidable costs rather. Shoes, bedding, a change of clothes and underwear, etc. are not basic essentials in the Manwel Mallia handbook of how to (mis)treat immigrants.
If it weren’t for an informal army of very determined (mostly) women, most immigrants would go shoeless and sleep on bare beds in the same clothes they wore when they first arrived.
In Malta , we tend to get our priorities wrong. What sense is there is wasting good money on reports to promote the right to vote in piddly local elections to African immigrants when some, like this gentleman, do not even enjoy the basic human right of freedom of movement or own a pair of flip-flops?
They are hand-cuffed because of the risk of them escaping as has been the case so often.
With regards to him being barefoot, how do you know that was not his own choice ? After all many Maltese walk barefoot as to foreigners.
Don’t be ridiculous. The reason he was barefoot is that he had no other option.
He ran away because he was afraid. Handcuffs never prevented anyone from running away. Their use is just a show of force and humiliation.
Have you been to any of the detention centres? You really shouldn’t voice any opinion until you’ve been there.
Sounds more like the time when a former president of the republic in an interview reminisced on the days when he went to school either barefoot or wearing one single shoe of a pair.
The last I saw a Maltese go barefoot in Valletta and all its public places, law courts included, was the 70s, only to learn that the pour soul was deficient and had to be taken for psychiatric treatment.
Channel 4 is currently airing a horrific documentary about last October’s tragedy. The streaming link is below, but I cannot figure out how to save it and upload it.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/europes-immigration-disaster/episode-guide
What is happening in Malta since the PL is in government. We seem to be sinking lower and lower. Thank you all idiot switchers and backstabbers for bringing Malta. not the PN down.
I cannot describe how I feel reading this. How frightening it is to think that either fear or apathy has allowed this spectacle of chained black men to occur in a court of law.
How frightening it is to know that we are not challenging this and other racist and bigoted behaviour and language because the proper authorities who should be upholding the law and protecting the vulnerable are part of the problem rather than the solution.
Has anyone told the detainees that they can refuse to be handcuffed?
You are perfectly right. And by their resounding silence our politicians in government, particularly the Prime Minister, are condoning this behaviour.
It suits them to a tee of course, to have the nation preoccupied with scapegoats.
Minister Mallia is the person responsible for all this.
The prime minister is his poodle.
History all over the world has shown us that a people can easily be steered into grave racialism.
We are part of this world and let us not think that we are immune from such an affliction. The PL seems to be playing quite a crafty role in this.
On the one hand, pandering to and even fanning the current xenophobic wave, takes a strong-arm stance towards the irregular immigration problem. But, either as part of a political ploy or because some of its members are truly unhappy with the party’s anti-immigrant position, we have recently witnessed two good interventions by the President and Minister Helena Dalli.
Cynically, I would suggest that the PL has realised that even people with no racist tendencies do have a vote, so they are trying to beef up their liberal image on this issue too, while not giving up on the xenophobic vote.
But even so, it is at least a plan. What about the PN? Are they risking seeing the liberal, level-headed carpet being swept from under their feet here too?
How can any decent person with any minimum of compassion do such an outrageous thing?
Are we re-living the past of America’s southern states?
I hope action is taken against the perpetrators of such a horrendous action and that it won’t be repeated ever again.
From what I gather on the grapevine and read in blogs and postings, we have been there since last March and getting worse by the hours.
We are a nation of bullies. Parading these immigrants around in this manner shows a clear intent to humiliate them. If Dr Gonzi had a single redeeming factor, it was his capacity for human compassion.
This is a fine example Labour are setting their children. Teach a child to hate others and one day they will hate you.
Well said but please allow me to say that Dr Gonzi had more than one redeeming factor. He was a statesman par excellence, of a certain refinement, intellect and culture not easily found today.
I agree that Dr Gonzi had more than one redeeming factor. My statement, however, was intended to be free of partisan politics. Love him or hate him, Dr Gonzi is a compassionate and humane man.
Aunty Hetty, the immigrant was not taken to Health Centre barefooted, he escaped and ran barefooted which is totally different.
At Safi and Hal Far a doctor will visit every day – 6 day week.
I calculate that around 15 to 20 percent of all detainees will go to clinic everyday.
Most of the cases seen are fictitious, they will ask for prescription and if not given they will get aggressive. Going to clinic and not given a prescription is not accepted by the detainees, even though it wont be needed.
Others will ask to go to hospital and they don’t accept waiting, they will visit the clinic every day until the doctor and nurses will intervene with Mater Dei staff to find a doctor / consultant accepting to see them.
Also the UNHCR staff and other NGOs will make constant pressure on the medical staff to find an appointment and eventually they will oblige even though they know that the detainee is inventing medical problems.
The detainees knows that where it comes to health issues the authorities cannot refrain anyone to visit doctors or to do any medical investigations necessary so they will abuse the already overstretched health services
Every time I go to the hospital, which is quite often, and I happen to see African immigrants there, they are always patient, polite, and unlike many Maltese know the meaning of the word ‘queue’. Are you sure we’re not existing in some parallel universe, Len?
I’m so bloody sick and tired hearing these poisonous and unfounded stereotypes of immigrant behaviour, that I wonder whether most of my countrymen are gullible and insecure morons. Well on second thoughts, after the past two election results, I shouldn’t be surprised at all.
OH really ? From what is said here, for the immigrants to revert to such a sort of relief, as seeking pretended ailments, their situation MUST (in bold capitals) be worse than hell. These are social human beings who under normal humane circumstances seek each other`s company over a tea. Sort of what we do when we flock to the local for a round of beer. What is stated really reflects on a very pitiable situation.
Chris Fearne wants mothers to breast-feed their walking, talking children until the age of two-and-a-half.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140625/local/new-policy-aims-at-encouraging-breastfeeding.524994
And what is wrong with that? The WHO recommends it until the age of four, many cultures do that too, including the inhabitants of Greenland for example.
The WHO’s recommendations make sense in situations where food supplies are erratic and clean water supplies are next to non-existent.
All else is obsessive, mindless bullying of women who have neither the mind, nor the time or inclination to live as a milk-making machine.
It is beyond ridiculous to bang on about breast-feeding when the worst dietary problems are not formula milk but what comes afterwards.
What next? Breast feeding into adulthood?
“Breast feeding into adulthood?” The mind boggles. It would give a completely new definition to the term “mummy’s boy.”
Two-and-a-half he will be eating a big Mac.
The politicians, NGOs and police should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and it is hoped that such deplorable situations will not be allowed to happen again.
Still proud to be Maltese?
Daphne, stonewalling those ignorant women was the right thing to do. As Edward Gibbon says, “I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.”
You don’t even treat an animal that way, let alone a human being.
No, you glorify animals and burn humans at the stake.
Whoever says this is not racism should look up in the dictionary and UNDERSTAND what the bleeding word means.
You are right: pig-ignorant is the description for these people.
Racism and homophobia is one of the dictators’ joker cards. Two typical cases are Hitler and Milosevic. Everyone is familiar with Hitler’s rise to power founded on anti-Semitism but not many realise how Milosevic hung to power following the fall of the Berlin wall and eastern European communism. In brief, Yugoslav Federation was one of the very last countries where citizens rose up against the regime and introduce democracy. When Yugoslavs (mostly Serbs) organised the first and only demonstration in Belgrade’s Red Square, Milosevic, who had succeeded Tito as president, order the army to shoot at the protesters who immediately fled, never to organise another protest.
Seeing the risk of losing power, Milosevic immediately spinned the centuries old Kosovo story, abusing of the state controlled media and mobilising his propaganda machine to instil hatred against the Kosovars. The trick worked perfectly for some years but ultimately resulted in the disintegration of the Yugaslav Federation. Thus one can say that Milosevic’s policies only kicked the democracy can further down the road. But until the can was again met a decade or so later, the Serbian population had gotten infected with hatred towards the Kosovars and later on the Bosnians and many Serbs became supportive of Milosevic and his extreme-racist policies that saw atrocities not seen since the 2nd world war.
Joseph Muscat has managed to find varying levels of support from a large section of the Maltese by instilling his racist push-back policy mostly w.r.t. black (no disrespect intended) Africans. This is just opportunistic populism in view of the fact that otherwise, if the Maltese were to analyse the real national situation will come to realise that this administration is nothing but a worse-than-amateur one.
Suffice it to say that within the first 30 months of his MLP/PL administration not one single high added-value, employment-creating foreign investment of major proportions, on the level of Lufthansa Technik for example, has been attracted to Malta. Instead we have had hunters and trappers appeased, bilding developers too, police investigations and court proceedings against PL-leaning individuals dropped, the prostituting of our national identity, the selling of what otherwise the MLP would refer to as our National Jewels to the Communist Chinese.
The Maltese have been blinded by JM’s ‘floodlights’ of anti-immigration propaganda.