BirdLife insists on police action over hunters' website

BirdLife said today that it was surprised that the police had said they had found no infringements in the website forum of the hunters’ federation.

Reacting to a statement by the police commissioner on Tuesday, BirdLife Malta said it was revealing more messages taken from the FKNK website in addition to the report it had filed to the police a year ago.

The society had appealed to the the police to carry out investigations regarding the messages targeting BirdLife.

The society said that a post dated January 24, 2007 on a thread entitled “yes we’ll smash things” wrote: “yes we are ready to use fists of iron. I am willing to be arrested! damn it, only God must hold me back because I will make a massacre of people damn these… what do they think? That we’re not going to take the law into our own hands?! This cannot be. We have always done this and that’s what we’re going to continue doing: bombs , beatings , bottles flying , vandalism…”

Tolga Temuge, BirdLife Malta Executive said he could not understand how the Commissioner could claim that no infringements were found.

“If these messages posted on the hunters’ website forum are not against the criminal code, the electronic communication act and the press act, then what is?” he asked.

He said that since its initial report to the Police, things had not changed.

“BirdLife is not asking for the closure of the website in question, but rather is asking police to carry out thorough investigations so as to take legal action against the people posting these messages, as well as FKNK as the organisation responsible for its website. FKNK should not allow these kind of messages that incite violence and hatred to be posted on the forum. It is evident from FKNK’s own statements that these messages are not vetted and most of these were in fact still online until today," BirdLife said.

“We demand to know why the Police Commissioner claims that no infringements were found. Furthermore, the police force should be able to easily identify any one who registers him/herself with a website forum. Even if this person has been given the opportunity to clean his/her hard disk, the information can still be obtained from the internet provider and the hosting webmaster,” Temuge concluded.