Europe cannot deplore a pushback policy it has employed itself

It's funny how people's attitudes towards things like immigration and human rights tend to change when they are no longer actually in charge of those issues themselves.

This week 69 lawyers filed a writ in the local court, as a sort of follow-up to the writ filed in Strasbourg by the altogether more modest number of two (2) lawyers representing human rights NGOs.

I must admit the figure of 69 lawyers struck me as rather impressive. I don't think I've ever heard of such a concerted effort among the members of a single profession to make a statement on the subject of human rights. Until, of course, you realise that all 69 of those lawyers are rather closely associated with the Nationalist Party - and that the initiative was clearly orchestrated by the Opposition to muster a show of force against the government... and suddenly, the dynamics of the entire affair change beyond recognition.

It is after all very easy for the PN to mobilise that level of support among the legal profession... if and when it feels the need to. But this only raises the question. Why did the PN feel the need precisely now? Why not at any point in the 10 years before 9 March, when the people politically responsible for immigration in this country were (in order of appearance): Tonio Borg; Carm Mifsud Bonnici; Lawrence Gonzi, etc?

And where were those 69 lawyers when the previous administration took the astonishing decision to forcibly repatriate (as opposed to threatening to deport) over 200 Eritreans in 2002... in what must be the single most calamitous crime ever committed by a Maltese government? And where were they when the same government, in 2010, also supported Italy when it embarked on a policy of pushing migrants back to Libya without allowing them the possibility to apply for protection... which is virtually indistinguishable from the action proposed by Joseph Muscat's government last Tuesday?

Among the people defending Italy's illegal pushback policy at the time was none other than PN leader Simon Busuttil: who used his position in the EP to defend the 'Maroni method' (as it was separately described by Normal Lowell, who also joined Busuttil in defending it tooth and nail)... though judging by the angelic expression of shock and horror on Busuttil's face today, I imagine the PN leader would rather we all forget what he said and did only two years ago.

Trouble is, some of us don't forget that easily. Among the things I haven't forgotten was how former Foreign Minister Tonio Borg - whom Busuttil likewise defended during the EP hearings to become Commissioner - expressed his wholehearted support for the same illegal policy in 2011: unsurprisingly, seeing as he himself is guilty of having committed the same crime the Commission now pretends to be horrified at Muscat's government for merely proposing.

Honestly, in all my years writing about Nationalist hypocrisy I don't think I have ever seen a more cynical, calculated and appalling case of double standards as the one we all saw unfolding this week. Deportation? Oh, it's OK for us to ignore international treaties, all known norms of human decency, and illegally deport 200 people to a country in the full knowledge that they would be tortured and murdered on arrival (as indeed many of them were); but if Labour so much as threatens to do the same thing it, suddenly it's a crime against humanity.

But while hypocrisy and double standards are exactly what we've come to expect from the PN these days, I for one was profoundly disturbed by the same level of hypocrisy shown to us by the European Union this week.

Let's start with the Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom, whose reaction to the proposed deportation of 40 Somalis to Libya was nothing but a bundle of total contradictions from beginning to end.

This is what she wrote on her blog this week: "I would like to stress that according to EU and international obligations, all people arriving in the EU territory are entitled to file an asylum request and to have a proper assessment of their situation... The European Commission will use all the tools at its disposal to make sure Member States fully respect their obligations in this regard. We also stand ready to increase our support to Malta if it should face growing migratory pressure. Should Maltese authorities ask for it, we are ready to engage in discussions on further measures, be it financial support or assistance through the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and Frontex."

Frontex... Frontex... now where have I heard that name before? Of course! In an article criticising the EU's border control agency for... let's see if any of you can guess... that's right: returning migrants to unsafe destinations without respecting their right to seek asylum. (And it would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for the pesky European Court of Human Rights deciding that Frontex, just like the rest of us, is not actually above the law...)

This is what Human Rights Watch's Refugee Program Director Bill Frelick said about the same issue in September 2011: "Frontex has become a partner in exposing migrants to treatment that it knows is absolutely prohibited under human rights law... To end this complicity in inhuman treatment, the EU needs to tighten the rules for Frontex operations and make sure that Frontex is held to account if it breaks the rules in Greece or anywhere else... It's a disturbing contradiction that at the same time that the European Court of Human Rights was categorically ruling that sending migrants to detention in Greece violated their fundamental rights, Frontex, an EU executive agency, and border guards from EU states were knowingly sending them there..."

So consider for a moment the monumental irony staring us in the face here. The European Commission will use 'all the tools at [its] disposal' to stop Malta from deporting asylum seekers without processing their applications. One of those tools is precisely Frontex - which has been guilty of the exact same crime itself.

Not only that, but the same European Commission that now deplores pushbacks policies in such horrified terms, had - like Simon Busuttil, Tonio Borg, etc. - actively backed Italy's pushback policy only three years ago, in July 2010. This is how it was reported at the time: "The European Commission finds nothing wrong with Libya taking back illegal immigrants rescued on the high seas by Malta and Italy... In the first unambiguous statement supporting the practice, the new Director General for Migration, Stefano Manservisi, defended the bilateral agreement which Italy signed with Libya in 2009 and which saw the North African State take back most of the migrants rescued in the Mediterranean... Mr Manservisi argued that Libya was a signatory to the 1969 Addis Ababa Convention governing aspects of refugee problems in Africa, which binds Libya to principles which he said were similar to those of the UN convention, including cooperation with UNHCR."

So Cecilia, do tell us: when should we take the Commission at its word - when it tells us that it's OK to deport migrants without giving them to opportunity to apply for asylum? Or when it tells us that it's not OK to do exactly the same thing? Reason I ask is that the answer cannot exactly be both at the same time. (Or can it? Honestly, with the Commission contradicting itself so bloody often, you really can't tell...)

Meanwhile I sincerely hope the European Commission is not going to echo Simon Busuttil's line of reasoning, that... Oh, but there's been a European Court of Human Rights ruling since, and that changes everything. Au contraire, mes amis - it changes absolutely bugger all. Mass deportation and exposing people's lives to serious danger is a crime, not because it was ruled as such by the European Court, but because it is obviously an unacceptable thing for any civilized country to do. That there is also a law to spell this out for us should be considered a mere reminder of an obvious state of fact. Otherwise, by the same reasoning, one should only oppose murder (or any other crime) if there is a specific court ruling spelling out that it is illegal.

Anyone with any level of intelligence at all will realise that this is simply bizarre. It is just as bizarre when applied to crimes committed by countries (or for that matter, EU agencies).

But there is another problem with Malmstrom's response. I happen to be one of those annoying people who tend to sift through every word of statements that I think are important. There was even a time I even lectured at the University of Malta, with a view to teaching journalism students how to be as thoroughly annoying as myself. I would present them with random excerpts from literature, and encourage them to approach the wording with a critical eye - to scan sentences and identify where nuggets of hidden meaning (the connotations, nuances, and so on) may be buried.

If I were still doing that today, I would ask my students to read through that paragraph again and try and home in on the words and turns of phrase that might shed more meaning than the sum total of what is actually being said. Please note, for instance, the following grammatical constructions: 'if [Malta] should face growing migratory pressure'; 'should Maltese authorities ask for it'; and 'we are ready to engage in discussions on further measures'...

What the verb tense tells me here is Commissioner has tacitly rejected that Malta is, in fact, facing growing migration pressure. Such pressure is presented to us only as a possible future condition that has not yet arisen: hence, 'should Malta face, etc'.

On paper, the numbers back her up. This time last year Malta had already taken in more asylum seekers than in 2012; and even more the year before that. This suggests that arrivals are actually on the decline, even if - and I find it surprising that I should end up explaining this to a politician, of all categories of people - what really matters is not that the reality of a crisis; but the perception of a crisis. And the perception is very real, even if the crisis itself may not be.

Cecilia Malstrom can be as dismissive as she likes about the concerns of ordinary Maltese citizens, when faced with a truly exasperating situation that has no end in sight. She can minimise our complaints, pooh-pooh concerns and the people making them, and be as condescending as she deems fit. The only thing this approach will achieve in practice is to create further distance between the people of a Member State, and the Europoean Union which - until quite recently - the same Member State was actually quite enthusiastic about... but which now feels it has been betrayed and abandoned. 

The same principle applies to Malta's repeated requests for assistance. According to Commissioner Malstrom, these simply never happened at all ('should Malta ask for it' - which translates as 'Malta hasn't yet asked'). Personally I would like to know what constitutes 'asking for help' under these circumstances. I have been writing about immigration for just over 10 years... almost exactly as long as Malta has been exposed to multiple landings by asylum seekers.. and I don't think a single year has passed without Malta howling along the lines that Brussels must step in and solve all our problems with a flourish of its magic wand.

Tonio Borg, Carm Mifusd Bonnici and now Manuel Mallia... all have separately tried (and failed) to get a mandatory burden sharing agreement with the EU. You can, I suppose, argue against the request on various grounds; what you can't do, however, is what is Malmstrom tried to do on her blog... i.e., argue that the request wasn't made AT ALL.

Of course, it doesn't help to have EU council president Hermann Von Rompuy coming here and telling us the exact opposite, as he did last Thursday. So which European Union representative are we now supposed to believe? Von Rompuy, who tells us our 'concerns are being heard'? Or Malmstrom, who tells us that there are no concerns to hear because we haven't actually expressed any?

Meanwhile for what it's worth, this is how I think the issue should be tackled (and I wrote about this elsewhere so I'll keep it brief here). The real reason deportation cannot be an option is the complete lack of safety, security and human rights protection in Libya, for which Europe is directly responsible owing to the active role it (and the UN, for that matter) chose to take in dismantling the country's security infrastructure during the recent conflict.

Any long-term initiative aimed at keeping the immigration phenomenon under control has to start with improving the situation in Libya... not for the sake of any problem we have here, but because the international community owes it to the people of Libya. So perhaps Commissioner Malstrom may wish to tell us what steps the Commission will take to address a human rights black hole it has itself helped to dig on the EU's doorstep.