When journalists and activists in Malta flag personal danger, they won’t be doing so lightly. They’ll be doing it after giving much thought and after dismissing alarm bells a good number of times.
It is a fact that, in this scorching country, anyone who fights for our basic democratic rights does not have the support of our institutions. Worse than that, those who speak out are subject to dehumanisation and disinformation campaigns by the Labour television station, Super One, among others. And, after October 16, 2017, the haunting possibility that you are silenced by violence became all too real when Daphne Caruana Galizia was blown up.
Of course, journalists and activists know what they’ve gone in for but that does not mean they do not worry. Their main niggling thought is: what if their family ends up paying for what they’re exposing and battling? It was, perhaps, what upset Daphne most and led her, at times, to take breaks in her writings: that to get to her, they attacked her sons.
No one should live with that kind of fear anywhere in the world, let alone in an EU member state.
Last week, blogger and activist Manuel Delia endured three days of spoof-website attacks; ficticious pages looking pretty much like his blog were shared online with the aim of confusing his readers and attacking his credibility. Subsequently, the same tactic was deployed all over the rest of the media (except, ahem, surprise, surprise, Super One) and spoof-websites have been spouting all over.
Now, this may sound as a bit of a harmless lark. It is anything but. It is the insidious thwarting of truth. Whoever is behind these spoofs is a coward with lots of money: it costs and arm and a leg to finance a digital trickery like this.
Also, the perpetrator seems to have a penchant liking for Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers and their arguments, as seen in the fake Newsbook pages, fake Netnews, fake Lovin Malta, fake Jason Azzopardi posts and a fake Repubblika NGO website. The latter’s president, Robert Aquilina, like Delia, also asked for police protection after a Labour politician warned him to “be careful”. “I want to know my wife and children are safe, at least at night. This is like a page straight out of a mafia book,” Aquilina said.
They lay the bed for the blurring of fact and fiction among the members of the jury in the upcoming trial. This is extremely dangerous
No one wants to wake up to the sound of a bomb blast behind their door for telling the truth. It’s not like it’s inconceivable – it has already happened. It happened once; it can happen again. After all, the direct line to the key people in authority and in parliament that existed then could still be open.
Fenech may look like Kojak but, judging by the charges just brought against him, he fancies himself as a rich Rambo. Hand grenades. Machine guns. Pistols. Hundreds of bullets. Deadly potassium cyanide. That, allegedly, was Fenech’s shopping list made in November 2018, the same month in which Times of Malta and Reuters revealed that he was the owner of secret offshore company 17 Black, one year after Daphne was assassinated.
She had been the one to expose this rot, which subsequently revealed the Electrogas corrupt deal with Yorgen, Joseph Muscat’s top minister Konrad Mizzi and his chief of staff Keith Schembri, allegedly being the main protagonists, aided by the Gasans.
This is Malta taken over by the mafia. And the person who allowed that to happen – Muscat – recently told us that he’ll contest elections again “if they keep annoying me”. No one is making spoof websites of his precious josephmuscat.com as far as I can see and the only people “annoying him” are journalists and activists blaring out the truth about his greed and deceit.
This disinformation attack only has one aim: to confound and spread doubt about the criminal proceedings against Fenech. They aim to attack the credibility of those fighting for justice and lay the bed for the blurring of fact and fiction among the members of the jury in the upcoming trial. This is extremely dangerous.
In a comment under my column last week, one chap commented, à propos de rien: “Have you stocked lemons and Imodium dear Kristina? Cos u’ll [sic] soon need them.”
The comment is symptomatic of the brainwashing that happens at root level: people think of politics as football, that winning an election is like winning the league.
But politics in Malta is a far cry from football. To all those who expose wrongdoing, and to their families, it comes at a great personal cost. Indeed, Daphne paid the ultimate price, she paid with her life.
It is why we must stand shoulder to shoulder with our journalists and activists while they soldier on. We cannot let it happen again.