[WATCH] Activists demonstrate outside Justice Ministry over Caruana Galizia memorial cleaning

Activists claim Justice Minister Owen Bonnici ordered “systematic cleansing of people’s voices”

OccupyJustice activists demonstrating outside the Justice Ministry in Valletta on Wednesday (Photo: Yannick Pace/MediaToday)
OccupyJustice activists demonstrating outside the Justice Ministry in Valletta on Wednesday (Photo: Yannick Pace/MediaToday)

Activists from the OccupyJustice group are demonstrating outside of the Justice Ministry, claiming that the removal of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s memorial from in front of the Great Siege Monument constitutes an attempt to silence freedom of speech.

The group said, in a statement, that the government’s repeated cleaning of the “peaceful tokens” placed in front of the monument to “protest against corruption and impunity”, along with the boarding up of the makeshift memorial, is “a daily reminder that there is no rule of law in Malta” and “is nothing but an attempt to blatantly suppress freedom of speech”.

The demonstration comes after the hoarding around the monument, erected earlier in September, was this morning covered by a banner announcing restoration works.

“We came here today, in front of the Ministry of Justice, to lay flowers, candles and handmade ‘in memoriam’ notes, because this is the place where freedom of speech has come to die,” the activists said, “The Justice Minister, whose prime duty, as an elected member of Parliament, is to uphold freedom of speech in the country, sits here, in this building, in his office and gives order for a systematic cleansing of people’s voices. A nation which suppresses its citizens is a nation which kills its soul.”

“Here, on this very doorstep dies the last semblance of a democracy,” they said.

Calling the sending of government employees from the cleansing department at 3am to clean the monument “the most bizarre thing”, OccupyJustice said this amounted to an erosion of democratic rights, and was not something which happened in European Union countries.

“The sudden need for the ‘restoration’ of the monument is not about aesthetics. It is not about health and safety. It is not about illegality – each time our banner was stolen, the police itself helped us to retrieve it. This is about censorship“ they stressed.

“And in the words of Minister Owen Bonnici himself: ‘Censorship hurts. Always. It’s bad. This is wrong.’ But clearly he does not practice what he preaches, and prefers to reach out for the broom instead.”

They highlighted the fact that, eleven months on, it is not yet known who commissioned Caruana Galizia’s murder, and there isn’t even “a semblance of a search for an answer”.

“Prime Minister, no boarded-up monuments will make us forget what happened, and nothing will blind us to the erosion of democracy in this country. No barriers will make us stop our quest for truth, justice and freedom,” they emphasised.

“We shall not rest until justice is served because this is our nation, this is our home, and we are the people. We expect better, we deserve better, we demand better,” the group added.

Nationalist Party statement

Bonnici’s order to remove the banner, flowers and candles from in front of Caruana Galizia’s memorial is “completely unnecessary”, the Nationalist Party said in a statement.

“This shows the contempt the Labour government has for freedom of expression”, it said, “It is unacceptable that a minister responsible for justice and culture uses government workers to censure and intimidate Maltese citizens, who are protesting peacefully for justice to be served in the case of Caruana Galizia’s murder.