Some dates live on in infamy. September 11, 2001; September 1, 1939; June 28, 1914; August 6, 1945; December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963.
October 16, 2017.
Yes, you read that one right. October 16, 2017. Like a group of dates that have changed the course of world history,
October 16, 2017 is ingrained in our collective psyche. We reel them off when we make a list of dates that have wreaked destruction, ended lives, blighted history. Stopped us in our tracks.
Some people still talk about the day they heard that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. They knew where they were and what they were doing. People say that they openly cried, reeled in shock, refused to believe the news.
We all remember what we were doing and where we were when we heard that Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed on this day five years ago. I was at work after having read the latest blog post Daphne had put up and then carried on with my day until I clicked on the button for the next instalment.
But time stood still while hurtling at breakneck speed at 3pm on October 16, 2017. We no longer recognised our day, we no longer recognised our country. On a bright Monday afternoon, when the sun dazzled in the bluest of skies, our country turned pitch black with a click of a button. And we couldn’t see through the acrid smoke of a burning car in the middle of a field.
Before 3pm, a click of a button empowered us with information. But after 3pm with a click of another button, Malta became the place where journalists are killed. Yards from a car in which a mother was travelling with her child, yards from family homes, from Daphne’s own family home, within earshot of her son, Matthew; a country where a son was made to frantically try to save his mother from the burning inferno.
October 16, 2017. Malta became a country where people openly rejoiced at the killing of one of us. But many of us took to the streets of Sliema with candles in hand, finding solace in numbers because we couldn’t bear to be alone with our guilt.
As I walked disconsolately through the streets of Sliema that evening and in another protest with a sprig of laurels leaves a few days later I couldn’t help but think of the young Daphne walking the same streets of her neighbourhood filled with hopes and dreams for our country. But this is no country for people with dreams. It kills them. The dreams, not people. Or is it?
We have no choice but to fight on like she did. We owe it to Daphne- Alessandra Dee Crespo
October 16, 2017. The day Daphne was killed for having dreams for our country. She knew that she was putting herself in harm’s way by pursuing her stories. Did she have a choice? ‘Yes’, we might argue with ourselves when we think of her decades-long dehumanisation and assassination and our lack of engagement with our own duty as responsible citizens. But Daphne had no choice, for her patriotic duty was bigger than her fear.
October 16, 2022. Five years since that day of infamy. Many of us who walked in Sliema and Valletta in those early days five years ago have put away our candles and seemingly recovered from shock. But a few of us have kept the candle burning.
Five years. Some tell us to get a life. Others tell us to stop wasting our time because nothing has changed and nothing will. But we refuse to make the same mistakes we made when Daphne was alive; to relegate our duty as citizens of this country to others. So, we are on the front line, showing our faces, using our voices, writing in our name while feeling a little knot at the pit of our stomach, sometimes because the dark forces that killed Daphne are not yet appeased.
But we carry on regardless because the alternative is unthinkable. The alternative is collaborating with the hostile takeover of our country with our silence and compliance. So we have no choice but to fight on like she did. We owe it to Daphne.
“Come back with your shield ‒ or on it” was the parting cry of mothers to their sons going to war. Yes, on it. Because, in Sparta, a good warrior who died fighting for his country was brought back home on his shield as a badge of honour. Asked why it was dishonourable to return without a shield and not without a helmet according to Plutarch, the Spartan king Demaratos is said to have replied: “Because the latter they put on for their own protection, but the shield for the common good of all”.
If this sounds dramatic you have not been paying attention these past five years. We are at war. Yes, war was declared on October 16, 2017. If you were with us five years ago and have since put down your shield, pick it up again, remove your helmet and march with us again tonight at 6.30pm in Valletta. For love of country.
October 16, 2017, is still a date that will live on in infamy. But we have the chance to turn it into an opportunity for renewal. Daphne’s story does not end on October 16, 2017 for we are all custodians of her legacy. Like Daphne, we can all do something good and lasting for our country. By being good ancestors. Like Daphne was.
Because right and wrong are not a popularity contest; then and more so now.
Alessandra Dee Crespo is vice-president of Repubblika.