Activists plaster Caruana Galizia posters as memorial gets boarded up

The memorials for the slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have now spread across several other places, after the Great Siege was this week boarded up for restoration.

The monument in front of the Maltese law courts became a makeshift memorial for the late journalist, assassinated on 16 October by a car bomb outside her home in Bidnija.

The space became a controversial site for critics of the journalist, who insist the national monument commemorating victory at the Great Siege of 1565, should not be turned into a memorial for Caruana Galizia.

“The wooden wall erected around the place where in the past ten months and three weeks we demanded justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia and for our country will not discourage us,” the group Rezistenza Malta said in a press statement early Sunday morning.

“Rather, the wall erected by the government is proof that the authorities keep fighting against Daphne Caruana Galizia even though she is now dead. They demonised her throughout her life and are now doing their best to wipe her out of our nation's collective memory. We are determined not to allow this to happen.”

Three men have been accused of executing the journalist, although the motive remains unknown as is the person who commissioned the assassination.  

“In any civilised country, when a journalist is killed, the police take the most logical step and establish the motive behind the murder, whether it was in retaliation to what the journalist wrote, whether it was to prevent what the journalist alleged from being proved in a court of law or to stop the journalist from investigating and exposing further,” Rezistenza Malta said in its statement.

“Daphne Caruana Galizia never investigated the three individuals currently facing charges of her murder. Politicians were the subject of most of her investigations. However, as far as we know, no politician has been investigated or questioned by the Maltese police up to now in order to establish the identity of the mastermind behind her assassination.”

“Our reply to this cowardly act is in the form of a question: Who’s benefitting from Daphne Caruana Galizia’s elimination?”