Chinese New Year

The Chinese Cultural Centre sent this paper’s readers (January 22) good wishes for the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. 

One wonders whether they also sent good wishes to a Moslem community in China (who some Westerners of ill repute claim are subjected to ‘concentration camp’ conditions) and to the population of Taiwan.

Knowing some history, one might understand the present better. There is some vague analogy between China and Taiwan and Italy and Malta. The fascist dictatorship of Italy had claimed Malta was an Italian island (like Lampedusa) and tried to return it to the ‘motherland’ in the last war. 

Italian fascists also robbed Italian Jews of their property and sent many of them to concentration camps. Fortunately for us, although the Italians envisaged they would take Malta in a day, they never managed to do that and to annex us as a little addendum to Sicily, nor did the British government accept us as a tiny far flung addendum to the UK (as some of us initially wanted). 

Yes, as luck would have it, we’ve ended up as a miniature ‘sovereign’ state in the EU and I’m confident those who thought the EU would fall apart and won’t eventually evolve politically into the ‘United States of Europe’ will be proven to have been on the wrong side of history.  

Albert Cilia-Vincenti – Attard

The unhappy state of our capital city

The prime minister’s statement that he did not feel comfortable allowing his daughter to walk alone in Valletta following an unprovoked assault on teenagers by a group of adolescents is a matter for concern.

Incidents such as this have ruined for me the pleasure of walking in the beloved city of my birth, youth and university education and is undoubtedly proving a  deterrent to many others, especially the elderly, who enjoy shopping and just being in these streets.

I hope the commissioner of police and the Valletta council are prodded by Robert Abela’s words to take adequate action to ensure that this state of unruliness is tackled with urgency.

Valletta is a lovely city that should be allowed to recover at least some of what it has lost in recent years. But will anyone have the guts to greatly reduce the grip Valletta’s eating places have on the city, with many streets – Trq il-Merkanti and Triq it-Teatru l-Antik, in particular – becoming thronged with tables, seats and eaters, becoming extensions of eating places? I also find this situation quite shocking but too many businessmen will turn angrily on me for saying this.

I am one of those people – more numerous than some think – who long to see their capital city managed decently like one.

Paul Xuereb – Gżira

What is happening?     

In January last year, we had a horrific murder when Paulina Maria Dembska, a Polish lady, was found dead on the Sliema promenade.

A week ago, a Turkish lady, Pelin Kaya, was horrifyingly mowed down by a speeding car on her way to her apartment, after celebrating her 30th birthday with friends.

What on earth is happening to this country? Up to a few years ago, Malta was considered to be so safe to live in and spend one’s holidays.

To me, it seems as clear as daylight, that the problem is a lack of community policing and the law courts giving never-ending suspended sentences.

A vigil was held in honour of Pelin Kaya. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

My late and lamented father, Alfred Bencini, former commissioner of police in the early 1970s, always said that the presence of policemen deters criminals from committing crimes.  Stop that and you give them the ‘go-ahead’ to commit crimes at random.  

As for suspended sentences, well, we can all see what mayhem has been created by those criminals who were given a second or even a third chance to rehabilitate. It just doesn’t work, especially in the cases where hard drugs like cocaine are involved.

Colonel (Retd) Dr Raymond Bencini – Żebbuġ