They are humans, like you
Anti-migrant rhetoric is on the rise in Malta, and politicians are hardly doing anything to calm down the situation.
Over the past few weeks and months we have seen a number of loud but (mostly) peaceful protests by migrants who say their rights are being broken because of the surroundings in which they are being kept and the time it is taking for the authorities to process their asylum applications.
It has to be said that the migrants do not help their situation when things turn violent, as they did last week.
But, on the other hand, rather than taking some time to reflect on the situation many of these people escaped from, and the harsh prison-like conditions they are enduring now, many among us choose instead to spew hate on these individuals for “violating our hospitality” and damaging the accommodation we have so generously provided for them.
Unfortunately, certain rhetoric coming from the political camp is only helping to fan the flames of racism in Malta – maybe through a bad choice of words or bad choice of timing, or a combination of both.
This week, for example, a main PN spokesperson declared, for a second time, his endorsement of former Italian home affairs minister Matteo Salvini, who famously declared war on rescue NGOs and ordered the closure of all Italian ports.
These comments once again exposed the rift that exists in the Nationalist Party between the faction that has stuck to the PN’s Christian roots and those who would favour a more populist approach.
To be fair, the PN has already imploded, so such comments will unlikely cause much harm to the party, but they do the country no good, especially at a time when anti-migrant sentiment is on the rise.
That the comments were made on the same day that another protest was taking place at the Safi detention centre is rather unfortunate.
To make the situation even worse, the protesting migrants were yesterday paraded in court, zip-tied in twos, in scenes reminiscent of Guantanamo Bay. We have never seen this practice used before, so why now?
Ironically, the comments also came a few hours before the case against two soldiers accused of killing a man because he was black got underway in court. This case has exposed how bad the situation has become in Malta. We are not saying that many people would actually take up a gun and go on a shooting spree in
Ħal Far, but many people have actually commended the soldiers for their alleged crime.
Furthermore, certain comments that were made on the social media after the Ħal Far protest, with people urging the authorities to assault or even shoot down the troublesome migrants, make many of us ashamed to say we are Maltese.
No action seems to have been taken so far by the police despite the very clear hate speech crimes committed there, unlike in cases where the hate speech was directed at politicians or police officers.
We often hear talk about the need for integration, but real integration starts with accepting others as human beings like us. It starts with politicians being more careful in their choice of words and attacking the problem, rather than the victims of that particular situation. It starts with understanding that no one should be locked up for months on end in a detention centre with just the basic necessities.
A slogan adopted a few weeks back for a human trafficking awareness campaign – ‘Human, like you’ should also apply in the case of migration. Perhaps a similar campaign should be launched to sensitize us a bit more to the plight of asylum seekers, and to take the hostility down a notch or two.