‘Go back to your own country’ is such an easy thing to say

It is almost a month since the occupation started. After the government surrendered, television and radio were the next to go. All satellite and foreign channels are blocked, internet firewalls have been put up, and all the local stations just blare out p

The usual Sunday routine is not as it once was. The church was blown up by mortar shells during Mass three weeks ago, and the owner of the local shop was shot in the street for distributing traitorous materials (the last few copies of The Times and The Malta Independent before their offices and printing presses were seized by enemy forces). You daren’t go outside as the enemy’s vehicles patrol the streets and when their back is turned, you need to look out for the local rebels. Groups of youths in stolen cars, stealing, looting, raping, beating, and running wild, taking advantage of this lawless and wartorn little rock as it tries to cling to the last semblance of civilisation.

Most of the foreigners left weeks before the occupation, the ones that remained are now trapped here as all the airlines and ferries ceased their services weeks ago. The UN approved a no-fly zone stretching from Malta to the very most northern perimeter of the occupied lands in Finland and the once peaceful waters are swarming with nuclear submarines and warships.

Food is hard to come by; fresh food is impossible to find. Your supplies of water are running low as the RO plants sustained heavy damage in the night-time air raid earlier in the week. You look at your sleeping child and think, “What life is it for them here?” You live in constant fear of a knock at the door that could mean you and your family’s death. You lie awake at night praying that the bombs don’t rain down on your house and you hug your child tighter as the sound of gunshots ricochet down your once peaceful street. You know it is only a matter of time before they come to your house. You know that no one is safe from the end of the enemy’s barrel and you have heard the whispers and rumours of what is happening to the people in your once safe country. Contact with anyone other than your immediate neighbours is hard but you have heard through sporadic WhatsApp updates that civil servants have been rounded up and locked in Corradino, women and children have been separated and forced into makeshift labour camps at Hal-Far, and the elderly and sick have been shot on sight. It is impossible to know what to do. You know that Malta will never be the same again, you know that most of Europe by now is under enemy control and that finding a way out of this mess is nigh on impossible. Even if there was a way out, you don’t have any documents to prove who you are, as passports and ID cards were confiscated and burnt days after the govern- hardest decision you will ever have to consider. But then you look at your child and your partner and you know that you owe it to them to try to find a better life. To start afresh, to have a new chance for yourself and for them. To seek safety and sanctuary somewhere where you do not have to be scared for your life every second of your existence, somewhere where you hope your child can go to school without being worried it will be bombed while they are sitting in on a maths lesson. Most of all you hope, you wish, and you pray that one day you can return to your home. Whilst this idea seems a million years away now, it is a wish you hold close to you, deep inside and a wish that will keep you going through the tough times ahead.

Realistically, you know that the chances of you ever being able to return are non-existent – the island lies in ruins, your passport and documents are ashes, and should the war ever end, the fact that you fled to save your family will mean you will be hated by anyone that survives here. But your love for your family and the dream you have for your child’s future pushes you take this risk. You just hope, that wherever you end up, people will accept you, will try to understand why you did what you did, why you risked your life to try to escape the death and destruction left behind you.

Imagine for a moment that this is you, imagine that this is your country, and imagine that you are driven to flee in order to save the lives of your chil- dren. How would you feel?

Luckily, for us, the above is all a fabrication and you are sitting there reading this on your iPad or at your desk in your air-conditioned office, or even on your fancy new smartphone. You live in a peaceful, Catholic country and you are taught to “love thy neighbour” and treat others as you wish to be treated.

So why is it that this is also a place where “go back to your own country” is an insult slung at anyone who doesn’t fit your idea of what a local is. A place where people cheer and joke at the news of a young man who took his own life because of the way the system had failed him. A place where anyone who is slightly darker than you are faces abuse in the streets, at work, online, and in every other facet of society. As Europeans, we would do well to remember our roots. Immigration, emigration, refugees are not a new phenomenon. These wars, these movements of people, these influxes of new cultures have been a part of history for thousands of years and there is absolutely nothing new about what is happening. Every, single one of us, regardless of the colour of our skin, what name we give the God we worship, and where we believe we come from, is a complete and total mish mash of different cultures, ethnicities, and DNA. We all bleed the same blood and we would do well to get down from our oh-so-elevated and privileged positions and remember that in a heartbeat we could be the ones seeking shelter on a foreign and alien shore.