‘Daphne paid with her life for government’s culture of impunity’ – Fenech Adami

The culture of impunity in Malta which the government created is what led to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Beppe Fenech Adami said.

The Nationalist MP, speaking in Parliament on Monday, said that, just as impunity had led to the events of Black Monday on 15 October 1979, so had the government’s failure to investigate and bring to justice the corrupt led to Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

Fenech Adami, spoke of what had happened 40 years, when, after burning down the Times of Malta’s, a mob headed to his family’s house and ransacked it.

“I remember it as if it were yesterday. My beloved late mum had left for mass, and I remember the moment when, as a 12-year-old boy, I heard a huge commotion and our front door being knocked down. Dozens of people - not one or two, but a mob - entered our home and ransacked everything they found before them,” Fenech Adami said.

Evidently emotional, he recounted how he and his siblings had escaped to the roof, and that, when his mother returned from church, she had not found them there, and had ended up brutally beaten by the mob.

“She was beaten, punched and kicked… her earrings ripped off. She managed to escape to our neighbours, and ran up to the roof, telling us to jump from our roof to theirs,” he said.

Behind what had happened were well-known criminals who were protected and could do whatever they wanted, he said. “These people were protected every day, year after year, and that day they terrorised a country. And the country went through what it did because there was impunity.”

Once the Nationalist Party was elected in 1987, Fenech Adami said that people thought that things had changed for good, and that the rule of law would always be observed. But, with the current Labour government, the culture of impunity was re-established, he said, and this culminated with the murder of Caruana Galizia two years ago.

“Let’s fast forward to the present. We thought those days would never return. Today we remember 40 years from Black Monday, but we are also a day away from the two-year anniversary oft he murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a brave journalist who had the courage to uncover the corrupt.

“What happened 40 years ago was a turning point. But what happened two years ago was also a turning point, for the worse,” he said.

“And this happened because there is a culture of impunity in Malta. This government failed in the most absolute way to investigate the corrupt, and we are paying a price which is too high for this. Daphne Caruana Galizia paid with her life for the impunity the government created.”

He ended his speech with an appeal to people to stand up and fight the culture of impunity. “I appeal to everyone that if we do not stand up and resists this scandalous culture of impunity of this government, then we will pay a very high price.”