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A society of bullies

As I write, a wood pigeon is eyeing me curiously outside my window. It’s a handsome bird sporting a white band on the back of its neck, delicate blue-purplish tinges on its wing feathers, and as it tilts its head, barely two metres away, I can catch the glint of the sun on its eyes. I work in my living room sitting next to the window that overlooks the small garden, where spring is a joyful time: there are tits flitting in the trees, garden warblers twitching, robins twittering, green finches hopping from branch to branch. I like the blackbirds best, and the one in my garden perches on the treetops during dawn and dusk warbling in its melodious and long-drawn out pitches – its utterances are emotional, tentative yet courageous, explosive serenades that mark its territory and courts its mate. This same bird, large as a fist and with a bright yellow beak, is shot mercilessly in Malta. And green finches are only found languishing in little cages.

In Brockwell Park ten minutes down the road, where I go for a stroll virtually every afternoon, I like to sit by the pond where there are swans, Canada geese, tufted ducks, mallards, coots, moorhens, a kestrel and many passerines. At this time of the year, the waterbirds guide herds of young chicks behind them, cute and furious, cutting confused wakes as they chase their mother. It’s ironic that in London, the densely-built largest city in Europe, I see more birds in my garden than you can spot on a hill in Malta. It’s ironic not because Malta does not have any birds – during spring hundreds of species migrate over Malta – but because hunters in Malta don’t give you a chance to enjoy birds. If you catch the glimpse of a bird, you’re likely to witness its shooting down.

Does Malta dare call itself a civilised country if it allows a minority of men-with-guns to indulge in an interrupted orgy of massacring birds every spring, when these birds are on their way to breed? Hunters and trappers defy the law every day. They ambush the countryside for long periods of the year, particularly in spring when the countryside is in bloom and celebration. Their stone huts litter rural areas, the scorched-ground patches of trapping sites degrade garigue and cause soil erosion, and the RTO signs splash the countryside with white paint – and all this gives the Maltese countryside the appearance of a war zone. Yet hunters and trappers reign unchallenged in their unrelenting destruction.

Their tactic is to bully the government and anyone who opposes them into submission. When I was active in Birdlife Malta a few years ago, antagonistic hunters slashed all the crops in one of my father’s field, and left a warning sprayed on the wall that said, ‘Next time it will be your head.’ At around the same time, another hunter resorted to a covert plot of blackmail to attempt to gag me. Nothing will taunt me from writing what I believe, of course, but with the government bullying seems to work. Any small, ignorant, greedy band of petty criminals who believe in the power of the fist take on a weak government: besides hunters, think of white taxi drivers, quarry owners, many developers, fireworks obsessives, and the thugs who have turned L-Ahrax Tal-Mellieha into a shanty town.

Can you picture these people? At the danger of being stereotypical, I will attempt a description: young or middle-aged men with fat bellies, bulldog faces, hardened eyes, gruffy voices, condescending and foul mouths, contemptuous of anyone who doesn’t share their narrow greed. Malta is, to a large extent, a bully society. You only have to drive a car to see that: watch the drivers cutting you across dangerously. This attitude is the main reason why Malta, particularly in the summer, is an experience of dust and noise; the reason why firework enthusiasts assume they have a right to ruin your peace at 9am on a sunny Sunday.

White taxi drivers rip-off innocent tourists daily (as do many other business sectors). In one case, for example, an English friend of mine who had agreed to pay Lm3 for a trip found himself hemmed in the backseat by the driver and his crony, who said to him: ‘Unless you give us Lm10 you are not leaving this car.’ I can widen this argument to include a lot more people, but I will stick with the worst, obvious offenders. Such as quarry owners, for example, who are turning the most beautiful stretches of countryside into barren craters. In Dwejra, Gozo, their quarries are shredding an area of outstanding beauty into pieces, their rubble clogging the valleys, and dust from their operations covers plants and trees in a white film. They move into the countryside, mine it, leave a gaping hole and move on without rehabilitating it or cleaning up the mess. Why hasn’t the Planning Authority, or the government, squeezed them into rehabilitating the quarries? Why are polluters left to pollute your life with impunity?

The present outrage in the face of this bully society is the meek response by the government in clearing the boathouses at L-Ahrax Tal-Mellieha. The owners of these boathouses – a misnomer for shacks complete with kitchen, bedroom, and garden – are trying to wring the government’s hands into blessing their illegal standing. After turning three once-attractive beaches at Armier into shanty towns leaking rubbish and sewage, after ruining an otherwise alluring stretch of coast, squatting illegally on public land – your land – and building illegally their unsightly shacks, they expect the government to sanction their actions.

Up the road more of them are busy chopping the trees at L-Ahrax Tal-Mellieha and squatting more land for agriculture and for hunting and trapping. They slash-and-burn their way through the patches of trees – the bit of greenery that is public – and then go to the Lands Department claiming tenancy to that land and the Lands Department gives them the seal of approval. I know because I tried in vain to stop them when I worked at the Agricultural Department. Sometimes their actions are sanctioned by corrupt civil servants. I still remember the day when one of the civil servants working close to the former Minister of Agriculture Noel Farrugia accompanied one such person applying for a plot of land. He barged into my office unannounced, without introductions, and instructed me, ‘This person has spoken to the Minister and if you have to close one eye, then shut one eye.’ I treated the case like any other and found it dubious, so I denounced his application.

How could the government give clemency to the shanty town owners at Armier? It can stitch up their situation of legal limbo into legal acceptance, but it can’t ever morally justify such a move. These people have snatched a chunk of public land, and the government is invested with the responsibility to claim back the piece of Malta they have taken away from us: move in with bulldozers and clear the area down to the last stone. If, as their mouthpiece Joe Mifsud told this newspaper, they pick up a war, the state has the army at its disposal. In backing down the government is failing all those who uphold equity, civility and fairness, and giving free reign to the bullies.