Letters to the editor - April 8, 2025

Amnesty to dangerous animals

Alicia Bugeja Said took umbrage to my opinion piece alleging that the circumstances leading to an amnesty to dangerous animals was not given in good faith (March 8). She also states that my letter indirectly attacks the 24 NGOs who recommended that an amnesty is granted in order to safeguard the wild animals’ welfare.

How sad that the public official tasked with safeguarding animals’ welfare omits to give a full picture of what led to the state of affairs.

The impression that an amnesty was the result of dialogue between the NGOs and the ministry is more complex than it seems.

The junior minister fails to mention that the said NGOs were so concerned with the prevailing situation where it was public knowledge that wild animals were being kept illegally that they presented a number of recommendations (neutering, DNA testing, updating of the animal census) including an amnesty solely because of the total lack of enforcement of legislation by the authorities falling under the junior minister’s responsibility.

Theirs was a desperate call following the total abandonment of the authorities’ responsibilities in enforcing the law protecting dangerous and exotic animals.

It is therefore risible that Bugeja Said cynically presents herself as the paladin of animal welfare NGOs when in reality she (or the departments she heads) was responsible for the sorry state of affairs leading to the  NGOs’ pleas for action. A reasonable person wouldn’t flaunt these credentials.

Her good faith is further questioned by the publication of the Commissioner for Animal Welfare’s report way back on June 2, 2022 following a public consultation on the preparation of a National Welfare Strategy (referring to a previous report prepared by the commissioner in 2021).

In that report the commissioner urged the junior minister to immediately give a short amnesty to irregular wild and exotic animals in order to have them microchipped, neutered and entered into the national census.

Why did she allow the situation to deteriorate and ignore that advice for over three years?

Bugeja Said should come clean and acknowledge that the desperate pleas by the NGOs and the Commissioner for Animal Welfare were only the result of a situation originating from a culture of  lack of enforcement over the years by the very agencies she is legally responsible for. Time will tell whether the recommendations by the NGOs will all be implemented and what action will be taken when the amnesty expires.

Franco Vassallo – St Julian’s

Israel’s war crimes

People rush injured Palestinians to the Ahli Arab Hospital (Maamadani), after an Israeli strike hit a school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City on April 3. Photo: AFP

A headline in Israeli newspaper Haaretz (April 3) states that an Israeli air strike on a Gaza school killed 21 persons, the majority of them women and children.

Since March 1, 2025, the Israeli army (IDF, “the most moral army in the world”!) has completely blocked off all aid (water, food, medicine, fuel) from entering Gaza where about two million Palestinians are surviving.

These are war crimes.

The IDF and the Israeli government are behaving more and more like the Nazis.

Is it not time that the Malta government raises its small voice against these and hundreds of other atrocities being committed by Israel?

Stephen Vassallo – Xewkija