Filmed on the occasion of the visit of Commissioner Jacques Barrot, this reportage examines life in Malta’s detention centres.
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Non Sequitur No. 89
Worlds Apart
from the station.lu news:
Luxembourg receive asylum requests from Serbia, Bosnia & Iraq
Luxembourg was the 32nd most preferred destination for asylum-seekers in 2008, according to a report published by the United Nations Commission for Refugees.The USA, Canada, France, Italy and the UK received the most applications of the 51 developed countries covered in the report, which counted 383,000 asylum applications, an increase of 12% on 2007’s figures.Iraq (40,500, down 10% on 2007), Somalia (21,800), Russia (20,500), Afghanistan (18,500 up 85% on 2007) and China (17,400) represented the origins of the highest number of refugees.Luxembourg received 460 applications for asylum last year, compared to 430 in 2007, 520 in 2006 and 1,580 in 2004. Last year, the applications were mainly received from people coming from Serbia (219), Bosnia (31) and Iraq (29).
Extract from the UNHCR report:
Based on the first indicator (national population), the two Mediterranean islands of Cyprus and Malta received between 2004 and 2008 the highest number of asylum-seekers compared to their national population; 38 and 18 applicants per 1,000 inhabitants, respectively. Sweden ranked third (14 applicants per 1,000 inhabitants), followed by Austria (10 applicants per 1,000 inhabitants), Switzerland (8.5 applicants per 1,000 inhabitants), and Norway (8 applicants per 1,000 inhabitants). The United States of America, the main recipient of new asylum-seekers during this period, was ranked 27th with an average one asylumseeker per 1,000 inhabitants.
Also from the report one can see the origin of asylum seekers in Malta in 2007 and 2008 :
2007 : Somalia (585), Eritrea (339), Ivory Coast (77), Sudan (76), Ethiopia (73), Mali (46), Nigeria (38), Niger (25), Ghana (15), DR of Congo (14).
2008: Somalia (1,081), Ivory Coast (264), Nigeria (223), Mali (208), Eritrea (176), Ghana (111), Ethiopia (97), Niger (94), Togo (71), Gambia (44).
Somalia is a failed state in the Horn of Africa that only has a de jure government. it’s recent prominence in the news is due mainly to the fact that pirates operating in the seas around the Horn of Africa use Somalia as their base.
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Rightsizing
Go – Malta’s former telecommunications monopoly has announced that it is setting a target of 350 employees. That’s 350 people who have to lose their job because Go is…. “rightsizing”. Now there is nothing abnormal with a company in a competitive market adjusting its employment levels in order to remain competitive. When Go was privatised 3 years ago, one of the condititions imposed on it was that no employees could be dropped for three years. Well, the time has come and Go is availing itself of its right to do so. It has offered its employees a voluntary retirement scheme worth €60,000. This is the last offer of its kind CEO David Kay told employees.
What really struck me in David Kay’s letter to the employees is the use of the word “Rightsizing”. Now there’s a euphemism for credit crunch time. I was listening to a radio emission on France Info on my way to work this morning. One of the many union leaders was complaining about the government’s attitude to the not so well off. He said (and I paraphrase): “The government knows that people with €1000 a month can barely make ends meet, yet the government’s message to these people is that they should be grateful for having €1000 a month.” In other words, the mechanism of governmentspeak requires the citizen to be thankful for a desperate situation and makes it sound as if he should actually be thankful to the government for that situation.
GonziPN has not quite reached those levels yet. What it has shown to be capable of is turning around its failures into pseudo-achievements. The removal of a tax that should never have been is the typical case in point.
Anyway. “Rightsizing”… until recently it was “downsizing” – an objectively neutral term that could be agreed upon by both employer and employee. Now it is “rightsizing” – from the comfortable point of view of a CEO I guess it is the right term. An employee on the brink of unemployment (VRS or no VRS) would disagree. Don’t you just hate newspeak?
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Sprechen Sie Immigrationen?
I sat through the fourth session of my elementary German course this morning. The Direct Method of teaching requires the teacher (lehrerin) to use nothing other than the German throughout the lesson so Estonians, Frenchies, Maltese, Hungarians and Swedes alike are fully immersed in the linguistic nuances of asking someone whether he/she (singular) is married (Sind Sie verheiratet?)
Four lessons later and I am still only capable of performing a basic gestapo-like interrogation asking for such interesting details as place of work, place of normal residence, postcode and of course – marital status. The lesson became more interesting today as a gentleman from the Cameroons belatedly joined the class and joys of asking “Wo wohnen Sie?” for a mind-numbing number of times (over einhundert). Unfortunately I have not yet mastered the Gothic script that would fulfill my dreams of Sturmtruppen-like transcriptions so occasionally my mind wanders onto other mind-wandering subjects.
I could not help wondering whether a PL Immigrant Assimilation class would look any similar to the motley crew of students responding attentively as to the whereabouts of various monuments in Stadt Koln. Of course I would have to replace Ghislain, Camille and Czaba with the various Sid, Seifeddin and Haile but you get the drift. “Fejn hu il-loki? Ghax il-vera nixtieq inpixxi u qaluli li Malta hadd ma jbul ma’ l-art”. Mr Zarb would correct the occasional error and repeat endlessly the various conjugations of the verb “tbul” shortly followed by the flash cards of various pictures of the inside of a W.C. room – “Dan it-tojlit… jekk int ragel tajjeb li tgholli is-sedil“.
Seriously. I promise it’s not the German, I’m actually loving the language. But four hours of repetitive nonsense coupled with memories of Inhobbkom Joseph’s Ghoxrin Punt did conjure up some weird scenarios. It was a bit like “Do not mention the War” but more of “Semitic please… not arab”.
Lost in the world of Wo, Wir, Wer and Was I am finding that I have developed a (hopefully temporary) sense of detachment from the colourless politics back home. Maybe the effect we have been describing for so long – as was recalled once again by David in his Maltatoday column – is finally having its long term effect. We might need to step back and remember what real change we have been calling for before the soldiers and lieutenants of the preservation of status quo and mind-numbing bipartisan antics begin to yell victory.
“Dan pastizz. Il-pastizz huwa tajjeb. Il-pastizz ma fihx laham. Tista’ tieklu anki fir-randan. Ir-randan huwa celebrazzjoni nisranija. M’ghandhux x’jaqsam mar-ramadan. Nhar-il wiehed u tletin ta’ Marzu niccelebraw Jum il-Helsien ghax minghalina li hlisna mill-Inglizi… issa ikkapparajna lilkom jekk Alla jrid… le Rashid… mhux Allah imma Alla… wiehed ghandna siehbi… “
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Sons of Adam
Barack (From Hebrew Baruch meaning Blessed)
The people of Iran are celebrating Naw-Ruz, the first month of the Iranian solar year. The first day of spring has been celebrated since time immemorial in the region of Iran – land of the ancient Persians. There are evident links to a pastoral fertility festival and legend attributes the foundations of the celebration to King Jamshid, a king who lived long before the great deluge. One particularity of this celebration is that it has “survived” the onset of different religions from Zoroastrianism to modern day Islam. Zoroastrians and Shi’i muslims alike celebrate this day, traditionally held on the vernal equinox (21st March) and it is also one of the nine Baha’i holy days on which work is suspended.
In Iran, this is the one holiday celebrated by more than one religious group. President Obama’s advisors are therefore proving to be more informed and better equipped to deal with dialogue with the nations of the Middle East than his predecessors had been. Barack Obama in fact chose the day of Naw-Ruz to deliver a video message to the people of Iran and extend a meaningful olive branch to the people of one of the oldest civilisations on this earth. There would be no paternalistic tones, no aggressive threats, no self-defined policing role. This was an open invitation to dialogue. It was more than that – it was an acknowledgement of the rich history, the rich culture and the rich potential of the Iranian people. It was a request for Iran to take up its rightful place among the great nations – an appeal to allow diplomacy rather than spear rattling to work.
In sharp contrast to Obama, Israeli President Shimon Peres also broadcast to Iran on Israeli Farsi radio. His were much heavier tones and he dismissed the Iranian leadership while appealing directly to the people – telling them that they could not feed their sons enriched uranium. Obama’s speech on the other hand was not naive. It gave Iran a choice to stand up, bear its international responsibilities and obligations and stand tall among the big nations. Obama offers mutual respect, a far cry from the Dubya tones of hellfire and bible-bashing. In their respective Now-Ruz speeches neither the Ayatollah Khamenei nor President Ahmadinejad mentioned Obama’s speech in any way although Khamenei did mention that world powers had been convinced that nothing would stop Iran from achieving its nuclear programme.
The President of the United States offered a most poetic ending to his appeal. Quoting the poet Sa’adi his was an appeal to unity and recognition of the one-ness of humankind: “The Children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence”.
Benedict (From Latin meaning Blessed)
Obama spoke to the people of Iran, the nation situated close to the cradle of civilisation. If one particular theory about the origins of man were to be believed then the human species came straight out of Africa and it was to the Dark Continent that Pope Benedict, head of the Roman Catholic Church headed. His first stop was in Cameroon where he landed on Saint Patrick’s Day. Speaking aboard the plane that took him to Cameroon’s capital, the pope touched on Africa’s AIDS pandemic, saying that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV.
The name Cameroon is derived from Rio dos Camarões, which is what the Portuguese discoverers named the region in the 15th Century. That was Portuguese for “River of Prawns” which gives the impression of a red river but was really named so because of an abundance of crayfish and prawns in the rivers of the land whose longest continuous inhabitants were pygmy groups. Pope Benedict had barely touched the ground of the land that had been colonised by Germans, French and English that his controversial statements with regards to the efficacy of rubber sheaths of impermeable membrane had begun to cause ripples across the world.
Here was the Head of the Roman Catholic Church, spiritual guide and guru for one-sixth of the world’s population going out on a limb with regards to a very human activity that has been with us since Adam and Eve roamed the earth. Now the Catholic Church has invested much in turning most things sexual into taboo exalting such qualities as virginity, abstinence and “purity” while denouncing promiscuity and a lax lifestyle. Whether you were spanking the proverbial primate or indulging in erotic desires of even the mildest dangers there would always be a spiritual guru from within the Catholic fold who would convince you that yours were the desires of satan and his ilk.
The anathema of most things sexual proved to be a winner argument for centuries and great thinkers like Augustine (the Saint) found it hard to move from “O Lord, make me pure but not yet” to “Total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”. The modern day assault is on Condoms as the new weapon in Beelzebub’s arsenal of propaganda. Benedict condemns condoms because they are, to him, a symbol of sexual promiscuity. A young man does not walk around with a condom in his wallet because he is responsible but because he is sexually promiscuous – he sleeps around. The condom is anathema because it causes sexual promiscuity – at least the Pope tells you so. In so many words.
Which is just plain stupid. I know its Benedict the whatever number who is saying it. I also know that he condemns condoms in spite of all the facts that show that the spread of HIV can be prevented when condoms are used during sex. The Catholic church believes that sex is only for married couples and preferably for procreation (though not only). Good for the Catholic church. Calls for moderation and prudence are not unreasonable either…there’s no harm to be done with a bit of self-control. But to give the impression that condoms are not a solution to the HIV problem in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is downright ignorant.
The spread of ignorance is not helpful. It is dangerous. Condoms are not a solution if you want to live a life in accordance with the accepted doctrines and standards of Catholicism. Nobody has a quarrel with that. Abstention and abstinence are the recommended daily requirements for a Catholic Sexual Diet. Admittedly it is not the strongest marketing ploy but the Catholic Church ain’t a business but a religion.
On the other hand Condoms are a solution for the prevention of spread of diseases as well as… hear this… the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. An appeal to the people of the continent most heavily afflicted with HIV not to use condoms is crazy. As the advert in Italy of the early nineties went “AIDS… se lo conosci lo eviti“. It takes an informed public to take steps to avoid infection. Misinformation is irresponsible. The Health Ministers of both Germany and France know that and they were quick to contradict Benedict’s statement. As was the Archbishop of Berlin. Funnily enough, the Catholic Church is not the only international institution preaching on Abstinence as being the solution. The other one? Bush’s USA – at least until recently when the bible-bashers had a say in the running of government.
Joseph (From Malta meaning “Inhobbkom”)
J’accuse has been wavering on local issues mainly for work reasons but I will not bore you with the detailed excuse of why we have not been assiduously chronicling the daily downfall of the one who was supposed to lead the Labourites into the Promised Land. Ironically the nature of my main source of income precludes me from commenting on the issue of VAT on registration tax itself since that very issue might end up before the institution that is the source of my daily bread. On the other hand what I can say is that the stance taken by Joseph and Labour is weird to say the least. Weird because the “moral dues” of this government as Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas would describe them, are also moral dues of the next.
Joseph is choosing to establish a precedent that might prove costly for his own government in the future. He does not seem at all miffed by the fact that government coffers would have to cough up 50 million euros if it accepted his position and Roberta’s. Far from the taxation crowd there was another important bandwagon to jump on and that was the irrational racist sentiment that seems to have reached boiling point. In pandering to the anti-boat people pundits, Inhobbkom Joseph drew up a 20 point plan that included the suspension of Malta’s international obligations. Now call me stupid and a coward but I do not feel comfortable electing someone who makes the kind of promises Ahmadinejad and Omar al-Bashir would be proud of.
Some were saying that Joseph is in EP election mode. As are the Motley Crew chosen by Lawrence’s (From Latin meaning “bearing laurels”) Party to contest for the prize seats in Strasbourg. Election mode makes strange people out of normally average human beings. Some will end up pioneering a new code of conduct for Euro-Parliamentarians just (only just) before most of the conditions being signed up for become the main rule in the EP itself.
Incidentally while the local EPP representative seems to be eager to pioneer transparency rules allow me to inform you that the ALDR (that is the Liberal Democrat Group) have long been pushing for better accountability and transparency of MEP actions. The EPP, that “greatest group” in the EP is facing a tiny crisis. Tiny because a party that should never have formed part of the formation has finally decided to call a spade a spade and admit that it has as much in common with the Christian Democrats as it did with Karl Marx’s heirs. I am of course speaking of David Cameron’s Conservatives who have announced a definite split from the EP and now face the dilemma of forming a new EP group with such colourful people as Polish and Czech conservative parties.
Padraig (Irish for Patrick)
As the Irish rugby team readied itself for a grand slam we heard the sad news that some eejits calling themselves the Real IRA decided to renew hostilities and killed men serving in the British Army. Sadly this came some days before Saint Patrick’s day and it became evident that the only interest of this kind of people was to rekindle hatred and restart the war that had begun to seem a thing of the past. I read an interesting article about this kind of people. They are the people who thrived on “the troubles”, who became relative nobodies once the guns were put down and the fear subsided. They missed their position of prominence, they missed the fear in men’s eyes when they walked down the street. They needed a casus belli, a cause for war. When that did not come they shot a couple of soldiers and a pizza delivery guy dead in the most cowardly of manners.
La Fheile Padraig came and we were mourning deaths that were needless. There is really no end to the stupidity of man. It would be base and stupid to blame religion for this latest massacre. Religion has little to do with this and many other conflicts. More often than not it is the pride of man – a misplaced pride buried in a ridiculous feud with a long forgotten origin that is the cause of the problem. What is it that the bible stories told us about pride? About the devil being cast from the body of angels and of Adam being cast out of Eden and condemned to an eternity of labour?
J’accuse (French for I accuse)
It’s the end of another week. I trust you have had a good week and that you enjoy yourself in moderation. Sin sin, níl aon scéal eile agam (Irish – that’s all, I haven’t got another story)… so I’ll see you all next time.
Until then… Bain taithneamh as an deireadh seachtaine… or what’s left of it.
Jacques has blogged about Air Malta’s advertising language on http://www.akkuza.com. Will you bless us with your presence on the blog?
This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared on the Malta Independent on Sunday (22.03.09).
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Read in the Hive
Got this weeks Economist and started browsing through it as I always do… starting from the back (Science and Obit). As I did so my eyes fell on an ad taken out in the Tenders section. The word MALTA stood out loud and clear and the title of the ad was “INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY – PROPERTY IN MALTA”.
The ad informed interested readers that “Air Malta plc is in the process of consolidating its operations by hiving off its activities in subsidiary companies in order to focus on core airline operations.” Which is a load of economic cock-and-bull jargon to say that AirMalta is to stop dabbling in other areas than flights and needs to sell off excess baggage.
The ad goes on to say that AirMalta is therefore trying to sell off its shareholding in Hal-Ferh Company Limited, along with a prime site in the Northern part of Malta (part of which was formerly Hal Ferh Holiday Complex): A description of what is for sale follows and includes land and structures in the picturesque area of Golden Bay limits of Mellieha.
What I really loved was the following statement:
This property is located in close proximity to two sandy beaches as well as an area designated as a Nature and History Park, thus offering significant potential for tourism related development.
Don’t you just love the quantum leap in reasoning? “Two sandy beaches” makes it sound like “two of the hundreds of beaches” that pepper the Maltese islands and not two of the four or five “real” beaches we are lucky enough to still have. Then comes that lovely bit of logic – “the land is close to an area designated as a Nature and History Park thus offering significant potential for tourism related development.”
Another National NIMBY in the making? It’s not AirMalta’s business of course, it is just selling off its assets (in its own right and through the Government of Malta). I wonder how the Development Brief will work out. More about the Development Brief here on gozonews. Here is an article from Di-ve sometime in September 2008:
The Island Hotels Group is interested in Hal Ferh, the Development Brief for which was released on Thursday by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
Director Winston Zahra, in feedback sent to MEPA during the public consultation phase, said that based on the example of the Radisson SAS Golden Sands Resort & Spa, his company could ensure that the project was environmentally sound and sustainable.
He sees Hal–Ferh as a natural extension of the existing resort, making use of economies of scale resulting in less development as facilities would be shared. The accommodation would be low-lying condominium style units with landscaping which safeguards the historical structures.
“The whole area in conjunction with the Majjistral History and Nature Park could be developed into a superb tourism destination if treated holistically and driven by the same developer,” he said.
The North West Local Plan identifies the site as part of a larger 120 hectare site earmarked for a golf course, the Development Brief said. The Development Brief said that MEPA would favour a high quality, family-oriented tourism development on the 84,900 square metre site. It also noted that acceptable secondary uses would be a small component of specialist, small, retail outlets, food and drink facilities (restaurant and cafeteria), and sports facilities among other things.
However, it noted that the facilities should be aimed primarily at residents of the tourism development and should not attract large numbers of visitors from outside the complex. The site includes the former Hal Ferh holiday complex, which has been languishing for years, as well as post-1939 barracks and a church/cinema dating to 1916.
The former military buildings are currently not scheduled but they are deemed to have historical merit and their retention and rehabilitation was therefore strongly encouraged. MEPA would like to see the proportion occupied by buildings increase from its current 17 per cent level to no more than 20 per cent, with 48 per cent left as open space and 32 per cent as soft landscaping. The buildings will be split into one-storey and two-storey clusters.
In all, the Development Brief envisages a total of 25,000 square metres of developable floor space. A traffic impact statement will be required and the eventual developer would have to upgrade some of the junctions on access roads. MEPA said that there would be various stages in the development. The government would first select a preferred developed through a competitive tendering process. Once all the requirements are met, MEPA will then issue an outline planning permit and eventually a full development permit.
The developer will be required to undertake a legal obligation to retain the tourism complex nature of the project would. “No part of the property should be sold or otherwise transferred to third parties. Accommodation facilities on this site shall not be used as buildings of normal residence,” the brief said.
