In the same week that the Union of Professional Educators’ executive head compared employers who require staff to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to how Nazi Germany forced Jews to wear yellow Star of David badges, we hear of how a Somali man was beaten to a pulp and thrown into the sea by a Maltese man to the cheering of a mob in Gozo.
It’s almost like the country suffers from some kind of schizophrenia where, on the one hand, we use our privilege as an excuse to amplify our own perceived persecution, and on the other, we choose to marginalise other people’s actual suffering and humiliation when it suits us. It is a symptom of a country that always manages to care too much about the wrong thing.
Make no mistake about it, it is a privilege to be afforded a vaccine. While other poorer and less geographically advantaged countries scramble to get enough together to give their people a single dose and prevent further devastation, most of our country’s willing have now been fully vaccinated for weeks if not months. This does not only mean that we are better protected against a disease that shows no sign of abating, but it also gives us the luxury of being able to leave the island and actually have a summer holiday away from our congested shores. Those trips to Catania that you make to bring back those cheap and cheerful kitchens and to take a quick photo of a cannolo wouldn’t be possible if our government hadn’t hustled and hustled hard.
When did supposedly Catholic Malta get to this place that the Pharisees would be proud of?- Anna Marie Galea
It is truly beyond me why people are so surprised that countries are saying ‘stay in your country’ to people’s unvaccinated behinds. Why should their populations, or indeed ours, have to pay because you decided that you know better than some of the world’s leading scientists? It’s not really your body, your choice when you could potentially bring a country to its knees; to compare taking a vaccine to keep yourself and others safe to the horrors perpetuated in Nazi Germany is not only insulting and disingenuous, but also extremely harmful. It’s also not the kind of rhetoric I expect from someone speaking on the behalf of educators.
Of course, while these croakings of the death of choice and individuality are taking place and dominating headlines, we have people being set upon by mobs allegedly because of their skin colour and a member of the opposition claiming on social media that such heinous crimes are merely the fruit of integration taking place too fast. I’m surprised his whole post didn’t start with a “I’m not racist but,” caveat.
Disgustingly though unsurprisingly, there was more outrage aimed at a satiric post replacing St George’s face with a Megalodon’s head than there was for a human being treated like an abused animal. When did supposedly Catholic Malta get to this place that the Pharisees would be proud of? Here they are, closing their doors and, in this case, mistreating people who are different while feeling like they’ve slain a dragon to defend their favourite patron saint. Our priorities aren’t just messed up, they are obscene.
It doesn’t take a huge leap to see just how little all this makes sense. If we are to move forward and grow as a people, we do not only need to call out injustice, but we also need to understand that opinion is no substitute for fact and logic, and that ultimately, fear can never justify hate. It’s been time to do better for some time.