A cyclist remained incredulous at the racist and misogynistic comments after she praised the kindness of a migrant who stopped to help her in Marsa when her bicycle developed a fault.
Dr Michelle Attard Tonna, the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Education, who heads the Bicycle Advocacy Group commutes by pedelec daily, but was forced to stop on the Marsa pedestrian bridge on Monday after the chain of her bike got caught behind the motor.
After attempting to fix the pedelec with a colleague for about half an hour to no success, a good Samaritan, who happened to be a black man, stopped to help and was able to get the bike up and running again.
Not managing to catch his name or thank him adequately, Dr Attard Tonna posted online thanking the man for his good deed, a fairly common occurrence within the bicycle community.
The post, which at time of writing racked up over 400 comments, was inundated with insults and disparaging misogynistic comments in Dr Attard Tonna’s regard.
Some alluded to crude sexual innuendo saying the man who helped her had only stopped because she was a woman or that she had decided to publicly praise him because she was attracted to black men and wanted to push a “multicultural agenda”.
Many flat out accused her of lying, saying she had “made up a story for likes” and that she “liked making up stories” that portray migrants and dark-skinned people in a positive light.
As an educator and a parent, I worry that this is the Malta that my children are growing up in, with so much anger and hatred
One woman’s crusade to comment on the post as many times as possible colourfully called Dr Attard Tonna an “activist against Joseph Muscat” and a "gidiba" [sic] (liar).
“The personal insults don’t really affect me, but to see such widespread disbelief and backlash at a black man stopping to do a good deed is very troubling,” Dr Attard Tonna told Times of Malta.
She said it was not the first time she had taken to social media to praise good deeds she came across, and a few weeks before had praised three Transport Malta officials who had also stopped to help her with her bike on a separate occasion, on the same social forum.
Dr Attard Tonna heads the Bicycle Advocacy Group.“As an educator and a parent, I worry that this is the Malta that my children are growing up in, with so much anger and hatred,” she said.
Dr Attard Tonna said that while she found the comments disgusting, she wanted to understand and not condemn people and hopes the incident would highlight how rhetoric-laden language was harming people’s outlook on society.
“We need to talk and reflect about the things that we’re saying,” Dr Attard Tonna said.
Malta’s hate speech problem has been well documented by Times of Malta.
Last month, social media was aflame with violent hate speech after public outrage following a migrant riot at the Ħal Far open centre devolved into commenters calling for violence while praising the perpetrators of the racially-motivated murder of Lassana Cisse Souleymane, who died in a drive-by shooting in April.