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Mr Carmelo Aquilina who wrote from East Sussex (16 July, 2006) is needlessly confused on my identity.
His confusion may be explained by his manifest lack of logic. I have “written about rave parties being held at Buskett (9 July, 2006) during the mating season, and lambasted the environmental NGOs for staying silent about it” because the laws of Malta protect bird sanctuaries. And the law is being honoured only in the breach.
Mr Aquilina has discreetly declined to indicate whether or not he finds this situation disturbing.
As far as I am concerned, this is a clear-cut issue which I have raised in parliament and in the press, and which I am in the process of taking up with the EU Commissioner for the Environment in Brussels.
This is altogether unrelated to the issue of hunting, about which I also expressed my views on previous and separate occasion.
My view is that hunters have rights which are recognised in the EU. If these rights are to be exercised in Malta, they can only be exercised during the bird migrating season. In the Malta context, it is a bird migration that regulates the sport, and not vice-versa. In any case, I have never supported hunters who contravene the laws of the land.
I have no hesitation in saying that, now that we are fully-fledged EU members, we have to abide by EU rules all the way.
In any case, this topic is altogether separate from the issue I raised on July 9. My argument was, and continue to be, that the law relating to the protection of bird sanctuaries is being flagrantly and repeatedly broken in Malta with official connivance, and that the prevailing climate of omerta must be denounced.
Adrian Vassallo MP (MLP)
Tarxien
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