Migration: Fuelling the flames

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was wise to distance himself on Friday from the unabashedly racist elements that wanted to hold a protest in support of his government's immigration policy.

But his dissociation from the planned anti-immigration protest - in response to a MaltaToday question - exposes a contradiction in the Labour government's entire handling of the migration issue to date.

By dissociating himself from people who want to applaud his proposed pushback policy, the prime minister is now sending out mixed messages. If, as he claims, his intentions were all along legitimate, why would he urge people not to express public approval of the same intentions? And if he is concerned with 'fanning the flames of racism', then why did he actively pursue a course of action that he must have known would only encourage and empower precisely the same racist elements in our midst?

Sadly, in light of an incident also reported on Friday - in which a dark-skinned bus driver was attacked on evidently racist grounds - the prospect of racially motivated violence can no longer be talked of in purely hypothetical terms.

And yet, this has been the case for quite some time now. Individuals who work in the asylum sector - among them Dr Katrine Camilleri, JRS's director - have been singled out for attack in the not-so-distant past... as have individual members of the media.

From this perspective, the fact that the government this week gave the impression - however erroneously - that its own actions were somehow 'in synch' with a growing and now almost palpable xenophobic sentiment can only be interpreted as a token of endorsement by those who are most likely to resort to racially motivated violence in the first place.

Now that he has urged an openly xenophobic group not to take to the streets to show support for his own actions, Muscat has at least signalled that he understands his responsibility when it comes to incidents such as these.

But the damage has by now been done, and the prime minister's weak attempt, at this late stage, to play down a rising atmosphere of racial tension and hostility can only come across as a classic case of 'too little, too late'.

And this marks but one of several aspects in which Muscat's handling of events has left a very great deal to be desired. In fact, what emerges most forcefully from a glance at the events of the week was the astonishing lack of leadership he has shown throughout the entire debacle.

First off, Joseph Muscat embarked on a course of action, only to be instantly forced to suspend it due to pressure from the international community - a development which seemed to take the prime minister completely by surprise, even though the backlash against a proposed breach of fundamental human rights was entirely predictable.

Worse still, his reaction to this turn of events was to lash out - very irresponsibly, it must be said - at the NGOs which took such timely (and, let's face it, courageous) action to halt what would effectively have been a crime against humanity. And he did so using thoughtless and provocative language in parliament, no less - including such words as "intolerable" to refer to the immigration phenomenon and implying that the NGOs had somehow worked against the national interest.

Considering the aforementioned threat of violence aimed at specifically the same NGOs, it is simply unconscionable that the prime minister would risk emboldening and empowering potentially violent people through such inflammatory language. And already his rhetoric can be seen to have had an effect: apart from the aforementioned attacks, there has also been an almost unprecedented outburst of racist language and attitudes expressed on the social networks in the past days.

At the same time, Muscat now gives the impression that he failed to anticipate a number of developments which anyone with any intelligence and foresight would surely have seen coming. His proposal to openly defy international law has clearly divided Labour's previously impregnable support base. Some of the party's more liberal exponents - including those who were attracted to Labour by its claims of being "moderate" and "progressive" - are now visibly uncomfortable associating themselves with a party and government that has enthusiastically proposed violating international law.

In brief, there is evidence - including a few resignations, albeit at low administrative levels - of clear fallout from this decision; but much more worryingly for Muscat himself, his European partners must surely be wondering about his own socialist credentials.

In the face of criticism from the European People's Party, the silence from the European Socialists has in fact been deafening... and who can blame them? It must be difficult to support a member party when it behaves for all the world as if it belonged to the clean opposite side of the political spectrum.

Perhaps all this can be put down to a simple lack of experience in dealing with any real issues in the past. If so, one sincerely hopes Muscat learns from his mistakes in time to avoid any more serious mishaps in future.