Those destroying Daphne's memorial 'declaring their guilt', her son says

Those who are consistently removing the memorial to Daphne Caruana Galizia outside the lawcourts are "declaring their guilt", her son Matthew said on Thursday. 

"If I were wrongly accused of a crime, I would do everything possible to see that those truly responsible are brought to justice, and centre the victim while doing it. Instead, each time they destroy it, those who support that destruction are declaring their guilt," Matthew Caruana Galizia said in a social media post.

Caruana Galizia was reacting after the protest site at the foot of the Great Siege Monument in Valletta was once again cleared of tributes and messages.

Meanwhile, Labour blogger Neville Gafà has been placing his own placards at the site - mainly deriding the slain journalist - in what he describes as an exercise in free speech.

The Great Siege monument opposite the law courts has hosted a memorial to Caruana Galizia since her assassination in October 2017.

The alleged bomb makers are currently on trial in court opposite the site.

In his testimony during the trial, Caruana Galizia gave a harrowing account in court of the moment he discovered his mother was killed in the car bomb outside their family home in Bidnija.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, he wrote: “This morning we found out that the protest memorial in Valletta was destroyed again."

“The point we have reached in Malta is not one in which there is doubt over who is guilty, but one in which those behind the murder and cover-up are proud of their crimes. What they're fighting for is not their innocence, but their impunity; their freedom to murder people in full public knowledge and get away with it," he wrote.

Responding to Caruana Galizia's post on Thursday, Gafà stood his ground and told Caruana Galizia: "That (monument) is not your property. You either remove that pigsty or else it will be cleared by the majority. It is the majority that rules, and not a few thugs".  (Dak mhux proprjetà tiegħek. Jew tnaddaf dik il-porkerija jew inkella jitnaddaf mil-maġġoranza. Tikkmanda il-maġġoranza mhux erba qlafat.)

The memorial site was cleared several times by government employees acting on the orders of then-Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, until a constitutional court ruled that those orders breached protesters' rights.

Bonnici eventually said he regretted giving those orders. The memorial was left undisturbed for years until October 2024, when Gafà began placing placards of his own at the site. This escalated two weeks ago when the trial started.

Meanwhile, Ann Demarco from activist group Occupy Justice has filed various police reports over hateful comments made on social media in her regard, linked to the memorial placard battle.

The memorial showing placards placed by Neville Gafa and Occupy Justice.

One of the three reports filed over the past week was for harassment after Gafà  posted Facebook posts with photos and a video of her, she said.

"The hateful comments have increased since Gafà started his campaign, both on our Occupy Justice page and also, since he plastered me all over his pages, on my own page.  I am being harassed, but us Occupy Justice women are tough, and we intend to keep the memorial going just as we did when Bonnici used to clear it away.  Especially while the family are going to court every day to listen to horrendous testimony about Daphne's murder," she said, adding that Occupy Justice was filing police reports each time the memorial was cleared or damaged.

Meanwhile, Gafà, a former person of trust in Joseph Muscat's government, started a parliamentary petition calling for a law to prevent national monuments from being taken over for such purposes. By Thursday at noon, it gathered around 800 signatures.