Times of Malta, 15 October 2018
On October 16, 2017, I was giving a lecture in environmental sociology at the University of Malta. As is the case with my two-hour lectures, I gave my students a 15-minute break halfway through it.
I duly scrolled though my smartphone during the break, and I read the news headline. Daphne Caruana Galizia had been killed in a car explosion. I froze. Contacted loved ones. Had to go back to give my lecture. Told my students.
A surreal hour followed. Some students had to leave the classroom out of shock. I had to go on giving my lecture, but was obviously not concentrating. Then I walked through the University campus. It had become a ghost town. A solitary student came up to me, exclaiming that we must do something.
That same evening I joined hundreds in a vigil along the Sliema promenade, and was overwhelmed to see that very week Malta’s biggest ever civil society protest, a 15,000-strong demonstration in Valletta, urgently organised by the civil society network. As a network we were all shaken but at the same time violently moved into action to gather fellow shocked citizens in a series of mass demonstrations, sit-ins and vigils. The demonstrations led to the formation of other activist groups such as Occupy Justice, Kenniesa and Awturi.
Like many others, I remained in a state of shock for many weeks. How could it be that Daphne, Malta’s most widely read journalist and blogger, had been blown up?
This was not the time to nitpick on what Daphne had been all about. This was about the brutal murder of a mother, a journalist, a human being. We had to demand justice. We organised sit-ins, appealed for the protection of whistleblowers and spoke to journalists and politicians from around the world.
A year later, we still do not know who ordered Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. The government seems to be doing its best to bury her memory and to make us forget that the investigation is stalling.
What is there left for us to do in the dark shadow of this unsolved murder, when everything seems to have failed? I endorse the call for an independent judicial public inquiry, led by both Maltese and international judges. This can be carried out within the remit of the European Convention on Human Rights. The legal framework for such an inquiry is already there – the Inquiries Act.
Such an inquiry can help exclude that the State could have avoided Daphne’s death but failed to do so. It can help exclude the State’s complicity and help avoid a similar assassination in the future. The Attorney General showed consideration of the possibility of a public inquiry in his letter of October 5, which is a departure from the Prime Minister’s position on BBC’s Today programme.
As 24 international free-speech and media organisations have insisted, the government has nothing to fear from such an inquiry but the truth.
We cannot permit that journalists act in fear of retribution for their investigations. Let us remember that Daphne was systematically dehumanised, insulted and threatened over many years, even by people in power, even after her death.
Let us not allow this to happen again. Neither to her family, nor to journalists who are doing their job. And let us remember that last week we heard of another assassination of a journalist in the EU: Viktoria Marinova.
In the face of a political climate that has become increasingly hateful, in the midst of a democracy that has been shaken, our voice needs to stay decent and steadfast so that justice is done, and so that no journalist is murdered like this ever again.
