Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, is under arrest. It’s the stuff of a Netflix series: he survived a poison attack (in his underpants lining), fell in a coma, recovered and returned to confront those he blames – Vladimir Putin and his ilk.
He has now been arrested on the basis of the flimsiest excuse that you could not even make up. It is blatantly, almost comically clear, that the Russian government (or should I say dictatorship?) wants to silence him once and for all. But if nothing has muzzled him so far, nothing will – not even death. So, instead, the attacks have turned on to those closest to him: his family, his friends and activists.
This week, the Russian police knocked on the door of Navalny’s doctor and the head of a medical union, Anastasia Vasilyeva. She was waiting for them, sitting at her piano. While they ransacked her house, she played the most beautiful, soul-uplifting performance of Beethoven’s Für Elise. When she finished playing her last chord, she flicked her hair and told the black-clad officials: “You can applaud.” They didn’t. Instead, they took her in custody and then placed her under house arrest.
I watched Vasilyeva’s Für Elise video over and over and I urge you to google it and watch it too. Its sense of defiance, its sense of fun, its sense of statement is extraordinary. This is fighting ugliness with beauty. This is resistance through art. This is fighting for a dying democracy with resilience and boldness but also with wit and elegance.
I keep thinking of Daphne Caruana Galizia as I follow the Navalny saga unfold. Each time I almost check her Running Commentary half expecting to find a new post with her thoughts on the latest twist. Daphne fought the corruption and the lawlessness with her fierce pen but she also fought it with beauty – her Taste & Flair magazine, her love of aesthetics was her way of coping with the rot of the crooks that took over the island.
Her death did not muzzle her work – it lived on. It’s been three years and counting and, with each day, we understand more how perceptive, how right she was. And, yet, with each day, we are still as far away from justice.
Francis Sant, a Bidnija resident, was this week summoned to testify in court for the case against murder suspect, money-buys-me-anything, Yorgen Fenech. Sant was the last person to see Daphne alive as she was driving down in her car from Bidnija to Mosta at 3pm on October 16, 2017.
I can’t even bring myself to quote Sant’s piercing testimony detailing the horrific manner in which he saw Daphne die. I wanted to weep. For her. For her husband. For her sons. For her family. And for our country. She was killed because she was a woman with a laptop who wrote the truth.
She was killed, because for two decades, Super One orchestrated a daily campaign to turn her into a vilified monster, a dehumanised witch. That campaign was then taken up by the same party in government led by the now disgraced Joseph Muscat. At the time when she was unearthing corruption, Muscat sneered, cocked a snook and drawled: “Where’s the evidence, na-na-na?”
By the time she was assassinated, people believed the spin so much that there were (and still are) fellow citizens who celebrated the explosion, stupidly failing to realise that they were rejoicing at the death of their freedom of speech and the death of the country’s democracy.
Then, two months after she died, a shrivelled version of Muscat told us that “the case was solved and we can move on”. But if we move on, we won’t find out whether he was linked to the assassination, will we? Why, only this week we heard yet again evidence in court linking Muscat’s very own chief of staff, Keith Schembri, to the murder.
Ostrich Abela, in his paradise sales pitch last Sunday, forgot to recognise that some of us have lost loved ones to COVID- Kristina Chetcuti
Prime Minister Robert Abela urged us last Sunday to look at other countries and realise that Malta is a heaven on earth.
I’m sorry!
A country where justice is not served is only a hedonistic paradise for the few. For the rest of us, these other people, it is hell. We are beyond exasperation but, as long we still are armed with the deadliest weapons of all – beauty, art and elegance – we can’t be muzzled.
Ostrich Abela, in his paradise sales pitch last Sunday, forgot to recognise that some of us have lost loved ones to COVID; some of us have had to suffer hefty pay cuts, or lost our jobs, or had to quit our jobs because of the erratic schooling.
Above all, he completely sidelined yet again all our elderly who are living in care homes. They have been locked in for months on end with only television as their company. That is hardly paradise. Is it so difficult for a prime minister to acknowledge national pain?
Perhaps he could get an idea or two by looking at how Britain treated the 100-year-old war veteran Sir Tom.
During the first lockdown in March, his laps around his garden raised extraordinary amounts of money for the NHS. His impeccable manners, modesty, good humour and optimism were simply the best of what humanity can offer.
If you are an elderly person reading this and feeling lonely, please try and get your relatives or your carers to show you a video of Captain Tom’s No. 1 hit with Michael Ball, You’ll never walk alone. Listen to it and fill your heart with joy – and know that you are in our thoughts.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti