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In the early hours of last Tuesday, anonymous terrorists – for terror is their resort – torched the door of the private residence of Katrine Camilleri, a lawyer who works with the Jesuit Refugee Service and who publicly defends immigrants’ human rights. Specifically, she assists asylum seekers in seeking a fair trial with the authorities in their applications for refugee status, in line with international human rights.
Whoever they are, their intentions are now clear: to disseminate fear among the declared fighters of racism, among those who stand up in the even bigger wave of xenophobia reigning on the islands and speak the voice of reason and solidarity. The sad truth is that as a nation, we have been complacent in this fear for far too long.
This attack was the latest in a string of arsons targeting the Jesuits, an author and other individuals who are publicly committed for human rights and dignity, and who work directly with migrants against the odds of a heavily racist country where leadership from all sectors has failed so miserably.
The bitter irony after last Tuesday’s attack is that the only threat to our society is the fascists themselves. They thrive on public fear and prejudice, disseminating dread for the unknown foreigners living among us, but the only real threat comes in the form of their own fascist violence on people they disagree with. That no lives have been claimed so far is only coincidental. The massiveness of the destruction left in the string of attacks property was potentially fatal.
Like the tip of an iceberg, this incident stares us all in our face, the most glaringly visible and shocking sign of a massive problem ahead of us that is engulfing us in its enormity.
When Claire Baluci’s concert in aid of African children was boycotted last year, indifference was at the heart of the deafening silence of artists and intellectuals. Bit by bit, that indifference has been transformed into “common sense”, so declaredly common and widespread in our everyday language that it inhibits a fear of diversity of thought and lifestyles; a populist attitude that one should not make such a fuss about the immigrants’ plight, even less stand up for them. Myths have been turned into stereotypes, stereotypes into everyday truths, and these truths are being left largely unchallenged, if not egged on by the ideologically confused left-wing Maltese newspapers.
Simplistic arguments against immigrants, even outright hate speech, have increased dramatically in public over the last couple of years, and with them came the public tolerance and acceptance of the blatantly discriminatory and unchristian values professed by the extreme right, which is gaining ground amid a leadership vacuum and widespread political disenchantment. The strong anti-immigration public reaction after the infamous beating of migrants at the Safi barracks last year went incredibly unchallenged and legitimised in the appalling Depasquale inquiry.
Nothing, short of arson, has fuelled public outrage at the completely irrational and fascist sentiments aired unashamedly. It is also sad that despite the invaluable work carried by NGOs such as the one Dr Vella works for them, no civil front has been yet united to stand up against racism, as the voice of reason remains mumbled by the contradictory messages coming from the establishment.
While the Prime Minister has boldly and consistently taken a clear stand against racism, together with Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina, other ministers, junior ministers and MPs have been speaking in military terms about what is now publicly perceived as an invasion of Great Siege proportions about to destroy us. The very discourse used by the Home Affairs Minister, Tonio Borg, and his chief advisor on immigration, military expert Martin Scicluna, is extremely defensive, and deficient, treating the issue exclusively in terms of security, rather than diversity.
Only last December, Borg had no qualms insisting that his policy of detention of migrants served as a deterrent, while adding in the same breath that at least 600 migrants must have died while crossing the Mediterranean last summer.
In reality, we will never know how many of them make it or die, but immigration has turned the Mediterranean into an unofficial grave site and the only outrage to be aired on the island is aimed precisely at the victims of this global problem.
In our front page story today we expose the nonchalance with which the order to “keep at a distance” was given from highest authorities to AFM rescuers on 17 November last year, when a boat crowded with 200 migrants was navigating in force 6 winds through Maltese waters. Left on its own, it shipwrecked later that night, leaving at least 20 dead on Sicilian shores. It was an order that was unwise. And it underlines a cold and calculating approach to the plight of the boat people.
With the same insistence that we denounce racism, we demand a change in the AFM’s policy.
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