VALLETTA (AFP) — Mohamed Abdulaye and his wife knew they were taking a huge risk when they boarded an overloaded boat in Libya headed for Italy, leaving their five children in the strife-torn Somali capital Mogadishu in the hope of eventually reaching Britain or even the United States for a ticket out of destitution and violence.
Instead, 42-year-old Abdulaye lost his wife as the boat sank in July last year, and he and other survivors were rescued by Maltese sailors.
Now Abdulaye, like thousands of others, is stranded on the tiny Mediterranean island already overpopulated with 400,000 inhabitants.
"I never wanted to come here in the first place," Abdulaye said. "It's too small and you have no future for work."
After staying in a tent camp at a barracks in the south of the island, Abdulaye recently won the status of "refugee under humanitarian protection," allowing him to move freely and work in Malta but not leave the country.
Now he lives along with more than 600 other sub-Saharan Africans in a school converted into a dormitory in Marsa, a rundown section of the Maltese capital Valletta.
They sleep some 20 to a room on iron bunkbeds, with little in the way of amenities.
Since 2002, more than 7,000 boat people have arrived here unintentionally because of shipwrecks or engine failure, only to confront an immigration policy considered among the harshest in the European Union.
Boat people can be held in camps for up to 18 months under a policy that Paul Pace, a Catholic priest who runs Jesuit Refugee Service near Valletta, said "inflicts unnecessary misery," as the inmates are forced to live in "undignified and inhuman" conditions.
The charity is allowed to enter the closed camps that have processed about 1,800 boat people a year since 2002.
A report this month by Medecins du Monde slammed the "deplorable" conditions at the overcrowded camps, warning of health risks for the inmates.
Terry Gosdem of the Catholic charity Suret il-Bniedem (In Man's Image), which runs the Marsa centre on a shoestring, praised the French charity's report.
"They've done a good job to protect the basic rights of asylum seekers. These people are survivors, and we have to give them the ability to recover from their voyage and the mental attitude of being in detention."
The Maltese interior ministry declined to comment on the report when requested by AFP.
Only six percent of boat people who arrive on Malta obtain refugee status because of fear of personal persecution if they return home.
Another 43 percent win the right to humanitarian protection because of civil strife or war in their home countries.
The rest are to be repatriated, but Malta does not have the financial or diplomatic means to organise their flights home.
Apart from 19 Nigerians who were sent home this year with help from the EU, the others have been transferred to open centres where they can either try to integrate into Maltese society or find a clandestine route to Italy.
"Making 'Fortress Europe' will not solve the problem," Pace said. "People will take more risks. That's the experience we have."
The Marsa inmates are relatively better off than the some 800 immigrants living in overcrowded conditions at Hal Far, a tent village near the airport.
A 24-year-old Somali who gave his name only as Youssef complains of rain dripping into his tent. When he does not have work, he lives on a Maltese government allowance of about five euros (seven dollars) a day.
The only running water at Hal Far is in the toilet block, and there is no individual electricity.
Mario, an enthusiastic social worker at the site, admits "there is much to do," pointing to work on improving the lighting at the camp and building a dining hall and kitchen.
In the meantime, Abdullah, 32, from western Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, was preparing a mutton stew in a makeshift kitchen. Mario said Abudllah was to receive training in "basic hygiene in cooking."
Inmates can also take classes in English twice a week.
Gosdem said immigrants are encouraged to work in construction, a sector in which Malta lacks manpower. "Without the 250 immigrant workers provided by Marsa, the new hospital would not have been completed," he noted.
"The problem is not about employment. Unemployment is not an issue here," Gosdem said. Instead, "there is widespread xenophobia in Malta fueled by a few racists," he said.
SOURCE: AFP, November 26, 2007