TV presenter Mandy Micallef Grimaud is urging those people who created racist and sexist memes, depicting her with migrant men, to be kind and “put themselves in these people’s shoes”.
The memes started circulating on social media after her husband, Xarabank host Peppi Azzopardi, said he was offering their home to house migrants stuck at sea and urged other families to do the same.
Some of the memes showed Micallef Grimaud cavorting with black men, others showed well-built men ogling over her shoulder. Most were racist and sexual in nature.
Azzopardi, who has consistently highlighted migrants’ plight, has repeatedly been at the receiving end of racist and hateful comments.
“If the pictures were about me, I would see the funny side of it. But it isn’t about me. It’s about the suffering of human beings, so I can never laugh about that,” said Micallef Grimaud, adding that she stood by her husband’s statement.
Azzopardi had made the offer on Facebook, at a time when the Maltese government refused to rescue migrants stranded in Maltese waters citing the COVID-19 outbreak as the reason.
The migrants were eventually rescued by a Spanish NGO.
Following the post, many people contacted Azzopardi saying they were willing to help, said Micallef Grimaud. Others, however, resorted to racism and name-calling.
“If they think they are going to intimidate us, it’s never going to happen. I can never know that a fellow human being is going to drown and let it happen,” she said.
While people feared the virus, this was no excuse for racist sentiments.
Anyone in the situation of these migrants would do the same – and get on a boat to flee a life of fear, war and torture.
“The fact that people can find this funny is so sad,” she said, referring to the memes.
“I don’t like that people feel superior to others and make fun of them when we are all equal… This makes me very sad.
“But next to what these people are going through, the fear and pain, what I feel is insignificant. I stand totally with what Peppi said. I stand in front of him and not beside him or behind him.
“I have been to South Sudan, Tanzania and Kenya... and so I know first-hand what they are trying to leave behind them.”