Activist group turns Independence monument into memorial to Malta’s 'surrender' to Azerbaijan

Anonymous activist group Rezistenza Malta have overnight placed an Azeri flag on the Independence monument in Floriana and covered its plaque with one reading “In Memory of the Surrender of the Islands of Malta to the Republic of Azerbaijan”.

The plaque also notes the “Appointment of H.E. El Kasco as Governor of these Islands”, a direct reference to the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembr.

Schembri - owner of the Kasco companies - has recently been accused of receiving $430,000 from unnamed sources, just five weeks after he, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and communications head Kurt Farrugia, visited Baku, Azerbaijan, for high-level meetings with Azeri government officials. No members of Malta’s press or civil service had been invited to the visit.

In a statement sent this morning, Rezistenza said “It was not in the public interest for Joseph Muscat, Keith "El Kasco" Schembri, Konrad Mizzi and Kurt Farrugia to secretly visit Azerbaijan in December 2014. It was not in Malta’s interest for our government to enter into an 18-year obligation to purchase natural gas from an Azerbaijani state owned entity rather than buy at source.”

“Why was Gasol involved at all and how much money did it make on the sale of its Electrogas shares?,” the group asked.

It said the government’s decisions were “not being taken in the national interest”, as it questioned by whom Malta was really being governed.

“There are too many questions without answers and news reports without investigation from our authorities concerning the receipt and channelling of vast sums of money from Azerbaijan to Malta, Maltese companies and public officials involving Pilatus Bank, 17 Black, a telecommunications company and Buttardi to name but a few. Malta deserves much better and we demand answers,” it added.

The plaque placed on the monument bears the date “XV - XII - MMXIV”, or 15 December 2014, the day after the visit to Baku.

Rezistenza’s previous exploits

Last April the group placed a dummy of former Pilatus Bank chairman Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad - dressed in a white and black striped prison suit - outside the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit’s offices. The stunt came after Hashemi Nejad’s arrest in the United States for evading federal government sanctions on Iran.

In May they erected a cardboard cut-out of the Prime Minister, depicted naked to represent Hans Christian Andersen’s emperor with no clothes and with an award attached to it for “Henley & Partners Salesman of the Year”, a reference to Malta’s sale of citizenship.