Activism is not a crime

Just a few moments ago, my Inbox pinged.

Ireceived an email from the Repubblika president, Robert Aquilina, informing the press that his lawyer Dr Therese Comodini Cachia, has written to the Prime Minister and the Commissioner of Police to call upon them to provide him and his family members with sufficient protection to secure his ability to exercise his right to freedom of expression without fear, harassment, or threats following the publication of his book Pilatus: A Laundromat Bank in Europe. To be sure, activists have learnt how to cope in a hostile environment during the past five and a half years but this shouldn’t be the case in a European member state.

“The situation is desperate,” Daphne Caruana Galizia had written moments before she was blown up yards from her home for exercising her right to freedom of expression. The situation is still desperate because this country has not learnt the lessons from the dehumanization and assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Activists, journalists and writers are still being targeted by the Labour party in government and by its associates on media platforms, social media, and worse, by high ranking officials in the party and in government.

No wonder supporters of the government feel empowered to attack dissenters and critics of the government when the prime minister Robert Abela himself mocks books and blogs during a political event, an indirect reference to Aquilina’s book and Mark Camilleri’s blog where a month or so ago, the incriminating chats between the alleged mastermind of a journalist’s assassination and Labour Party junior minister were revealed.

The prime minister’s words were a virtual act of book burning. No wonder his supporters virtually gathered round this bonfire joining in the harassment, dehumanisation and disparagement of Aquilina’s book.

Rebecca Knuth, the author of two books on book burnings and the destruction of libraries, writes that books “are the embodiment of ideas and if you hold extreme beliefs you cannot tolerate anything that contradicts those beliefs or is in competition with them.”

Book burnings “are highly symbolic. When you destroy a book you are destroying your enemy and your enemy’s beliefs.” Book burnings and thought control especially call to mind images of the Nazi bonfires in Germany in May-June 1933. No wonder the State broadcaster felt no qualms to host an author who penned a book extolling Hitler and Nazism. Be careful, Television Malta, your fascism is showing.

This is why this country has not learnt anything from the assassination of Caruana Galizia. “The horrific history of exterminating books, sometimes exterminating the authors at the same time, is as much a part of current history as it was of earlier times,” writes Haig Bosmajian in his book, Burning Books. “Century after century, the book burners have lit the fearful, powerful, magical fire to reduce to ashes the fearful, powerful, magical books.” And sometimes their authors too.

The report of the public inquiry into the circumstances leading to the assassination of a journalist who wrote on institutional corruption, financial crime and impunity identified the State’s failure to protect her from the high risks of operating in a highly tribal political culture. By refusing to implement the recommendations for the protection of journalists, the government is tacitly endorsing the harassment campaign against its most prominent critics, co-ordinated and orchestrated by its highest ranking officials in government and in Europe. It is also very telling that an erstwhile demagogue who was exiled from the party radio was reinstated by the Prime Minister merely days after a major attack on Aquilina and the author of this column. How’s that for a major endorsement of tactics to silence critics of the government?

At the time of writing, the prime minister and the chief of police have not replied to Aquilina’s request for protection for himself and his young family, in spite of the vociferous appeals by international media freedom organizations.

Let me use their twisted logic for a moment. If they do provide protection, they would be acknowledging that Aquilina is in danger because of the culture of impunity they foster, or is it fester? Seeing that they never admit to any wrongdoing, it falls to private citizens to protect each other and ourselves from our own government and police.

Activism is not a crime. Covering up for criminals is.