Now that the Captain Morgan prisoners are on shore we can, for a moment, think a bit of our own sufferings. Just for a short while, mind you. Robert Abela has threatened to “fast track” asylum applications of these migrants. This does not mean they get to use the business lounge and skip the queue at security. It means the government intends to ignore its obligations to check properly claims of the dangers these migrants risk facing if they are sent back where they came from.
It’s the same understanding of “fast track” that Magistrate Joe Mifsud had when he lifted 66 statements of survivors straight from his in-tray and dumped them into his out-tray without so much as looking at them.
But in the meantime, the European Commission came back with an answer that everyone I should imagine, was expecting, except Prime Minister Robert Abela.
When our hapless infant of a prime minister announced his idea of the final solution replacing the horror of trains east to the localised innovation of putting undesirables on boats east, he promised we wouldn’t have to pay for the boats. Here’s the clip.
He reminded me, not for the first time, of Donald Trump promising to build a big wall that someone else would have to pay for.
As it were, money was no problem then. At one point we were spending €500 an hour to accommodate these migrants in the most miserable and unsanitary conditions imaginable. That’s more than Chris Cardona spent on himself on his trip to the Monaco Grand Prix at the public’s expense. That really happened, by the way.
If we booked floors at the Phoenicia for the Captain Morgan migrants, it would have likely cost just as much. But what’s significant is that though booking them suites at the Phoenicia would have been capricious and disproportionate, it would have been legal and the expense would have been eligible to be recovered from the EU.
As it happens the European Union, founded on the ashes of Auschwitz and in the wide-eyed hope that the brutalisation of racial minorities would never again be the policy of European countries, does not fund illegal off-shore prisons where migrants are penned in misery with their faces shoved into the jaws of death.
And Robert Abela, whose appreciation of history appears to be shallower than that of a particularly forgetful goldfish, fully expected to hire off-shore concentration camps in breach of international law and to get the EU to pay for it.
He fired our top representative in Brussels for not getting him the money which, to stretch the Third Reich metaphors, felt like one of the many random dismissals of Wehrmacht generals thrown out for not moving regiments that existed only in the Fuehrer’s imagination.
Consider the quote of the Commission spokesman in reaction to the surprise expressed locally that the EU is not paying for our cruel indulgence.
“We found the request not eligible for support. While EU migration funding can finance the provision of such supplies to the persons on board a vessel, all legal conditions must be met,” the spokesperson said.
Allow me to translate that for you. Yes, we do cover the costs of the reception of migrants. That’s the solidarity you always complain we do not show you. We would have shown it to you this time as well but your policy of off-shore prisons was illegal.
Illegal.
Illegal.
Illegal.
The fourth one of those repetitions was for Magistrate Joe Mifsud who recently rated the illegal push back of migrants to Libya as a “success”. Success, you see, is not just that you manage to do what you set out to do. Success is also in doing what’s right.
Expect now Robert Abela, Evarist Bartolo, Byron Camilleri and the others to express shock and horror at Europe “leaving Malta alone”. Expect them, in other words, to lie.
Consider then this other quote from the Commission spokesperson. “While Malta had not requested new funding for the operation, it had asked to make use of the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund. As of April, Malta still had just over €10 millions of its AMIF available for use.”
But in a reply to a parliamentary question by the indomitable Jason Azzopardi, our mercurial Foreign Minister said that Malta had used up its more than €20 million share in AMIF funds allocated for the years 2014-2020.
Not only does this mean he was lying to Parliament, an offence that in other Westminster parliaments would signify automatic resignation, but that here is a job requirement for our government ministers. It also means that these idiots have squandered over €10 millions of European funds allocated to help us receive migrants leaving them unspent because they knew no legal way of using these resources.
Those fascist thugs harassing peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters called young people of conscience ‘losers’ yesterday. They, on the other hand, in supporting this cruel and wasteful, irresponsible, illegal and unproductive policy of the government must imagine themselves winners.
If they’re so convinced of being right, the final act of our newly sacked permanent representative in Brussels should be to take the bill for the Captain Morgan boats the European Commission just refused to pay and take it to the self-described patriots and get them to pay the bill. Ask them for the €10 millions of EU funding their government was incapable of absorbing while we’re at it.
Let’s start getting our country back from these corrupt, racist, incompetent buffoons that have made our home their pigsty.