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Tonio Borg’s ‘deterring’ detention policy is in the clear, as laid down in the four-month investigation conducted by Magistrate Abigail Lofaro in which 48 witnesses were interviewed in 14 sittings on the controversial deportation of 450 Eritreans in the summer of 2002, where the Maltese authorities were declared free of any controversial or illicit actions with regards to the deportation: they were legally correct and did not flout UNHCR or Amnesty International guidelines; the law was “scrupulously” adhered to by the Police Commissioner, responsible for immigration, and by the police in their handling of asylum claims; and there no illicit pressure for deportation to take place.
That news is good for Borg, whose detention policy he famously labelled as a ‘deterrent’ is unable to face up to the spontaneous arrivals of late. Refugee Appeals Board chairman Henry Frendo, the history professor, on the other hand gets a feeble scolding: the inquiry confirms that the Board never gave any reasons for its decisions to uphold Refugee Commission refusals, save for their standard one-line refusal. Lofaro said Frendo’s board should examine each case by calling a sitting whenever possible, even though that is not necessarily required.
In any case, the Lofaro inquiry confirms the legality with which the Refugee Commission and the Maltese Government acted with regards to the deportation of the Eriteans, 199 of whom were refused refugee status by the Commission, and 251 of whom had actually refused to apply for asylum. Only two were granted asylum in Malta. The 450 immigrants were deported to Eritrea where, according to a revealing Amnesty International report on the war-torn African nation, deportees flown back home from Malta were greeted by army officials and sentenced to long periods of horrific torture. Following the publication of the report, the UNHCR - whose role throughout the summer of 2002 with regards the deportation of the Eritreans remains clouded at best since it has not been asserted yet whether it could have voiced its concern on their fate after being petitioned by AI and other groups - said the deportation of the Erirteans in September could have been “premature”. Two years too late.
MaltaToday reported that the Maltese government was obliged by international law to determine whether Eritrea could be considered a safe country for the repatriation of 220 Eritrean migrants back in September 2002, when the deportation had met international protest from NGOs and organisations amidst warnings that Eritrea’s human rights picture was a desolate one.
Forewarned months beforehand on the grim fate awaiting the deportees, both Eritrea’s main opposition party, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and UK-based Eritreans for Human and Democratic Rights (EDHR), petitioned the UN’s High Commission for Refugees as well as the highest Maltese authorities, including the President, the Prime Minister and other Ministers, to stop the deportation.
However, although 170 of the refugees did not apply for refugee status, Malta was bound by the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, to “determine whether there are such grounds… of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights” in Eritrea, before deportation.
According to the Convention, which Malta ratified in 1990, “no state party shall expel, return or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”
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