Vandalising Last Supper poster was a pre-emptive move, Patriots leader says

The leader of the far-right ‘Patriots’ party has said he ripped out Jesus’ face from a controversial public advert satirising the Last Supper to discourage people from vilifying religions.

Henry Battistino told MaltaToday that true Christians were genuinely hurt at the New York Best poster depicting Jesus and his apostles eating fast food, and that the outrage should convince the government to backtrack on its decision to decriminalise the vilification of religion.

Religious vilification was decriminalised last year as part of a package of laws intended to protect artists against censorship.

However, Battistino said that the government’s decision has hurt many true believers and that his vandalism was intended to raise awareness against the new law. 

“It’s fine to criticise religions, and indeed I criticise Islam as an invasive religion, but vilifying and caricaturing religions should be out of bounds and I would never vilify Islam,” he said. “If someone had put up a poster ridiculing your mother then you would have got angry too.

“Joseph Muscat has had no problem admitting mistakes in the past, and now I am asking him to admit that this law was a mistake too.”

His sentiment has already been shared by new Nationalist MP Ivan Bartolo, who said in Parliament earlier this week that the Last Supper poster was “provocative” and that the removal of religious vilification has left many Maltese without legal recourse to defend themselves when their religions have been vilified.

The poster put up by NYB might have come as a surprise for some, but many other parodies of the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci have been circulating for many years – on the internet and in the world of art curation.

One such parody, a painting by Zeng Fanzhi, scored an auction record for Asian contemporary art when it sold for €23 million at a Hong Kong auction in 2013.

Henry Battistino warned that the mockery of Jesus would have snowballed had he not stepped in, and that someone might have eventually erected a poster of Jesus smoking a joint at the Last Supper.

More seriously, he warned that the poster could have prompted someone to satirise the Prophet Mohammed, which would have then sparked the ire of hot-blooded Muslims.

“If someone had erected a poster mocking Mohammed, then some Muslims would have issued a fatwa against him, which could have been deadly,” he said.

Battistino dismissed accusations of hypocrisy aired at him by people who recounted how his far-right group had handed out ham sandwiches during an anti-Islam protest at Msida last year.

“We had handed out ham sandwiches because we had heard that students at a school who were bringing luncheon meat sandwiches with them were being bullied by Muslim students,” he said. “We were taking a stand, but in no way did we vilify Islam… there were no posters mocking the Prophet Mohammed at that protest.”

Battistino said that he was in no way encouraging people to take the law into their own hands, but that citizens sometimes need to take direct action in “exceptional cases” to nudge the authorities into action.

Indeed, he cited how Moviment Graffitti activists had last year broken through the gates of Manoel Island, an action that eventually prompted MIDI to keep the island’s gates open to the public, a protest Battistino said he fully agreed with. 

“I didn’t do what I did because I wanted to play the hero. Indeed, I felt a great deal of stress as I was tearing down the poster, which is why I had to light up a cigarette.

“When there’s something wrong going on and there’s no institutional back-up, then yes, sometimes you have to take a stand. If you are a true Christian, then you consider manmade laws as secondary to the laws of God.”

NYB to replace poster with ‘generic’ advert

Meanwhile, NYB owner Tommy Diacono confirmed with MaltaToday that he will not print another copy of the controversial poster, but will instead replace it with a “generic” advert.

“I miscalculated how much the original poster was going to offend people and I now just want to put the issue behind me,” he said. “I’ve offended too many people in this past week and although many people have told me to put the poster back, this situation has simply exhausted me and I just want to move on now.”

He reiterated that he would not seek legal action against Battistino and fellow Patrijotti candidate Desmond Falzon for ripping down the poster.

“I want to give an example of how to turn the other cheek, and also I just want to move on from this issue,” he said.