It has been the travail of humankind, porched and branched over thoughts and writings going back centuries and millennia, to translate into exact words and phrases the role of art and artists, creativity and its components in our collective life.
Plato discussed precisely that in Ion, Phaedrus, Symposium and the Republic. Aristotle did the same in Poetics, Horace in the Ars Poetica, Plotinus in the Enneads, St Augustine in De Ordine II, and the list goes on and on up to Sir Philip Sidney (The Defence of Poesie), Alexander Pope (An Essay on Criticism), Novalis (Blutenstaub), Percy Bysshe Shelley (A Defence of Poetry), Croce (La poesia), Roland Barthes and our own Oliver Friggieri, to name a few.
What is certain is that creativity, freedom of expression and artistic liberty are the cornerstones of democratic, thriving, and free societies. The more artistic freedom there is in a society, the more open it is. And that is why we take attacks on artistic freedom of expression and artists exceptionally seriously.
We are a reformist government, a change agent that refutes the status quo and continuously works hard to achieve a better country in which we all live.
In the past years, we have radically changed our laws on artistic freedom of expression. We threw criminal libel out of the window, deleted whole provisions of criminal law, which had a chilling effect on artists and drew up modern and progressive laws relating to freedom of expression which are regarded to have been a massive step forward in the right direction.
In this context, news concerning the weaponisation and misuse of the criminal justice system against leading local artists who made use of their artistic expression to criticise and, yes, insult a private person with a public profile for some very controversial things he had said is something we could not watch passively and idly by.
We would both have miserably failed society at large and the artistic community had we decided to sit on the fence and allow these well-known artists to fight their battle on their own. We chose the course of more change. We swiftly and immediately opted to propose legal amendments which would, upon implementation, take the protection of artistic expression to another level yet unprecedented in our history as a country. And at the very first opportunity, we kickstarted a legislative process in the House of Representatives.
Artists should not be in the criminal court simply for doing their job
We realised that it would be immensely hypocritical, to say the least, to have Maltese people be perfectly able to watch all sorts of no-holds-barred satirical and comical shows produced abroad on whatever medium, but refrained from watching precisely that same thing if that show happens to be created by local artists.
It is the job, the living, the profession, and the work of our creatives to create shows for public consumption. Artists should not be in the criminal court simply for doing their job. Artists should be allowed to create, comment, and why not, even insult within the sphere of artistic expression.
Last week we published a set of progressive legal amendments that we are determined to push forward for more artistic freedom in our country. We are determined to keep bringing about change – positive, concrete change for the better.
We are transparent in our view and commitment. As long as an artist does not communicate expressions that constitute credible and realistic threats to a plaintiff’s freedom or personal security or their property, the law concerning the prohibition of insults and threats and the misuse of electronic communication should always be interpreted by the law courts in such a way so as not to impede artistic, satirical or comical expression.
So far, the feedback has been very positive, and various artistic community members genuinely endorsed our efforts.
We look forward to the forthcoming parliamentary debate and beyond. We are united in our endeavour to see more, much more, freedom of artistic expression.
Owen Bonnici is Minister for National Heritage, the Arts and Local Government. Byron Camilleri is Minister for Home Affairs, Security, Reforms and Equality.