We all knew that the commemoration of the second anniversary of the assassination of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia would not go by without controversy.
After all, Daphne was a contrarian, a person who takes up a contrary position in the face of conventional wisdom. She spoke inconvenient truths. She did not worship at the altar of the national religion, political tribalism.
Last week, a group of civil society activists and other likeminded individuals attended the opening of an exhibition called ‘Daphne: The Voice that Lives On’ installed in a prominent area at the European Parliament. A location purposely chosen by David Casa because it sees a lot of traffic of people who either visit the building or work there. In other words, you cannot miss it unless you really make an effort.
The exhibition was a collection of poignant photographs by pro-minent Maltese photographers who have captured the aftermath of Daphne’s assassination.
But this is one side of the story.
What the exhibition did not convey is the relentless assault on our right to protest the assassination of a journalist in a member country of the European Union. But it did not take long in coming even in a building that is a shrine to European values, to a European way of life.
We thought we were safe there.
Picture a man who in his hurry to flee the scene of ‘contamination’ dragging his suitcase behind him the wrong way up. Bringing up the rear were two other members of his party who went by at a more leisurely pace because they wanted us to see them, and most importantly, they wanted us to hear them sniggering like a couple of playground bullies.
We called out to them to join us. We wanted them to see what the decades-long vilification and the dehumanisation of a journalist by their party in government has accomplished.
This was assault by flowers, the very symbol of civil society’s protest for the past two years
We wanted them to see the burnt-out car that came to rest in the middle of the field after a powerful bomb threw it metres in the air. We wanted them to see Daphne’s husband, Peter, clutching his face in anguish. We wanted them to see the grief etched on Daphne’s mother, Rose.
We also wanted them to see Daphne’s boys standing tall and proud of their mother. We wanted them to see the rise of civil society, led by women their party seems to hate so much.
Their hatred of outspoken women is such that they had Helena Dalli, a prominent woman of their party, parrot the line that Daphne was killed because she was a woman. Such is their perversion.
When the incident died down, it felt like the aftermath of a drive-by shooting on democracy. In the heart of Europe. In a building constructed to celebrate European values.
“Is this the European way of life? Assassinating a journalist and then try to cover it up?” cried the Greek MEP Stelios Kouloglou at the opening. The Maltese MEPs seem to think so.
The behaviour of these three Maltese MEPs is certainly not any different from the nasty old men who sit on the benches close to the Great Siege monument heckling and insulting activists on a daily basis.
The behaviour of Adrian Delia and his entourage on the day of the second anniversary is not any different to these men either.
Why did he still insist on his grand gesture of laying a wreath in spite of the obvious distress this was causing Daphne’s sister?
This was assault by flowers, the very symbol of civil society’s protest for the past two years. How’s that for perversion? These are the flowers we did not mind removed.
Supporters of the Leader of the Opposition, who have decried Daphne’s sister’s actions as an attack on Delia, must surely know that the time for him to honour Daphne and her work was when she was alive, when she wrote the inconvenient truth about him.
Try as they might to whitewash his despicable behaviour in the last month of Daphne’s life, the inconvenient truth is that before the physical assassination took place, Delia actively contributed to Daphne’s character assassination that left her fatally exposed.
Another inconvenient truth for the people who fancy themselves guardians of democracy: we are not going anywhere anytime soon. We will only ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’ when justice has been served.
Alessandra Dee Crespo is a civil society activist