Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/392875
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2014 13 legal definition of an SOS. It is still left to the individual operators to decide." Coming back to the AI report: given the context in which all this is taking place – i.e., with the country exasperated by an increasingly hopeless migration scenario, and with a growing sense of resentment, xenophobia and hostility towards immi- grants in general – how do statements like this actually help? Doesn't this kind of at- titude also exacerbate the problem by pro- voking a backlash against migrants, and even against the NGOs themselves? "I don't think Amnesty expected pub- lic sympathy for publishing that report. NGOs like us don't do what we do to gain public sympathy. There is a responsibility to ensure that standards are met and pro- cedures followed. If 200 people died, there should be an obligation to come clean with all the details of what happens." This responsibility, he adds, does not ex- ist merely because NGOs demand the in- formation, either. "Speaking for myself – forget for a mo- ment my human rights background. As a citizen, if my government were partly or wholly responsible for the deaths of 200 people, I would want to know. And if someone is to blame - whether it's the prime minister, or that particular minis- ter, or an individual soldier, or the com- mander of that day who didn't pick up the phone… I would want to know. And the person would need to be brought to jus- tice. That counts for all of us, and for any kind of activity. "You can lead a perfectly law-abiding life; but if you breach a serious obligation, it needs to be highlighted... especially if it results in the death of an individual. That is how I see our job as human rights organ- isations. To applaud [the AFM] when they do a good job, yes… and we have always understood that theirs is an extremely tough job. "We have always expressed our appre- ciation, and we have always asked the gov- ernment to provide more support for the AFM, including psychological support for them to deal with the very difficult situ- ations they face. But there are rules and standards. It is the same with the police, or with detention service officers. No one can deny it's a difficult job – it's actually a nightmare – but that doesn't justify not doing your job properly. If anything, it requires that government provides more support so that you can do your job prop- erly. Because otherwise, it becomes a sys- temic problem; not just a case of individu- als. It is the system that is messed up…" Here Neil Falzon turns to a related issue outside the immediate issue of large-scale loss of life at sea: the deaths of Mamadou Kamara, 32, in the summer of 2012 while in the custody of Detention Services and Armed Forces of Malta personnel; and the similarly mysterious death of Nigerian Ifeanye Nwokoye in April 2011. "We still don't know, for instance, how those two migrants died in detention. Years after their death, we still don't know… because the inquiries instituted by the government have not been finalised, and if they have, we have not seen the re- sults. To me, that is unacceptable. We sent a letter to the Prime Minister a few weeks ago. There has been no acknowledgement or reply. We asked specifically: you had to publish the results of the Valenzia inquiry two or three years ago, but still there is no sign of it. There is a clear parallelism with the Lampedusa tragedy here: people die, and we are all left none the wiser." Interview Human Rights activist Neil Falzon echoes Amnesty International's complaints about the lack of transparency surrounding the deaths of 200 migrants in October 2013 Lampedusa tragedy PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD