Libel as intimidation

Few would disagree that the media wield a significant influence in any country, and that regulation of the media is necessary to prevent abuse of the power of the pen. It is for this reason that Malta, like all developed countries, has a Press Act which establishes the limits of that power, and to provide remedy in cases where the media overstep their legitimate purpose.

But when such legal safeguards are consistently used to intimidate the media and to try and stamp out the expression of public opinion on certain issues, the same Press Act becomes an accessory to the ongoing abuse.

Last Monday, FKNK secretary Lino Farrugia initiated libel proceedings against this newspaper over a cartoon. The ‘offensive’ caricature depicted him as being ‘spied on’ by a drone – i.e., an unmanned surveillance aircraft – as he relieved himself behind a bush. Ironically, the main inspiration was Farrugia’s own complaint that the use of drones to monitor the illegal hunting situation constituted an “invasion of hunters’ privacy”. The cartoon therefore merely illustrated Farrugia’s own point, in the humorous way cartoons are after all supposed to get their message across. 

That Farrugia took such offence to what was by any standard just a little bit of harmless fun, speaks volumes about both his and his organisation’s lack of a sense of humour.  But while it may be tempting to laugh this case off as yet another absurdity associated with the hunting issue, the implications are too serious to ignore.

Placed in the context of a long history of hunters intimidating anything and everything they perceive as antagonistic to their cause, this libel case constitutes yet another example in a long list of naked attempts to silence the press. It is clearly part of a concerted strategy whereby hunters, through their official associations, always try to bludgeon their critics into submission through punitive criminal action… thereby enlisting the aid of a legal/judicial scenario which is very visibly flawed. 

This is not exactly the first time the hunters’ representatives have actively tried to intimidate the press over similar perceived offences. In 2007, the FKNK sued a university student newspaper, Ir-Realta, over an illustration depicting hunting in what the association deemed a negative light. The cover of that edition featured a Jolly Roger (skull and crossbones) labelled ‘FKNK’, with crossed shotguns instead of bones.

Unlike our cartoon the message on that occasion was serious, in that it reflected a widespread (and very well-grounded) perception of hunting as an increasingly lawless activity. In view of the widespread reports of illegal hunting that have persisted ever since, few could argue that the message was incongruent with the truth; or that the newspaper had no right to express it.

By attempting to silence any expression of that perception – even in a cartoon or graphic artwork – the hunters’ association has effectively mounted an offensive against freedom of expression: which, whether the FKNK likes it or not, remains a human right enshrined in the Universal Charter.

Nor is libel the only method the hunters’ associations have used to try to quash this right. More recently, the FKNK asked the police to investigate a number of young conservationist activists after they posed for a publicity photo with birds that had been illegally shot and killed.

Incredibly, both the police and the law courts concurred with the FKNK’s view that the ‘crime’ of posing for a photograph with dead birds was on an equal footing with the very real crime of shooting those birds in the first place. As a result, the law against handling of protected species was perverted far beyond its original purpose, which was to safeguard against illegal hunting: i.e., the same crime that those activists were attempting to expose. The upshot is that while five activists face criminal charges over that incident, no one has so far been arraigned for shooting those same birds.

The message, this time emanating from the police and law courts as much as from the hunters themselves, is that anyone who tries to stand up to the practice of illegal shooting will find the laws of the land used for the blunt purpose of silencing them. This is simply not acceptable in a free and democratic society.

Such abuse is not only an affront to the fundamental right to freedom of expression, but it also directly weakens Malta’s law enforcement capability when it comes to human rights protection. The consequence is that the legislative arms of the state have come to be viewed as an integral part of this strategy to silence media critics. People may be discouraged from exposing future cases of illegal hunting (for fear of suffering the same consequences as those activists in the press photo case) or even from expressing an opinion in the newspaper (for fear of being sued for libel).

It is bad enough that our national attitude towards such issues as human rights remains so backwards that such attempts to stifle remain so consistent to this day. But it is intolerable that the authorities and institutions that are supposed to guarantee these rights and freedoms continue to allow themselves to be exploited for the opposite end.