Owen’s wall of shame

First they ‘cleaned’ the site, ‘defaced’ by so many pictures of Daphne, candles and flowers.

Each time they cleaned, the candles and the flowers and the pictures sprouted again. Then they cleaned again.

At first the cleaners were rather anonymous, and the cleaning took place in the darkest hours of the night. Then, seeing they had backing all the way up, they were emboldened and started doing the cleaning during daylight, not caring about the angry looks and muttered protests they got from many.

Then the backers, by now clear who they were, became more courageous, or more desperate as the case may be. A clean-up of the Great Siege memorial was decreed. A fence was hurriedly run up and all enclosed in a garish yellow cover.

There couldn’t have been a better way of attracting attention in a European Capital of Culture than this. In no time at all, the yellow cover was again covered with Daphne tributes. Soon it will be the 16th again and predictably the monthly assembly of people commemorating the intrepid journalist will gather there.

One would think Owen Bonnici, the minister behind the clean-ups and the yellow wall, did that to attract attention to Daphne’s atrocious death and to the fact her assassination is still a terrible mystery.

So while there are rooms at the European Parliament dedicated to Daphne, this is the only memorial Malta can afford to its journalist. Owen’s wall of shame.

And even if the people stop commemorating and remembering Daphne, this yellow wall will always remind people of what happened on 16 October 2017, of what Daphne had written before and of the murder investigation’s evident confusion afterwards.

If a broken chain was the government’s way of commemorating the meeting of all African heads of government in Malta some years ago, this yellow (the colour of cowardice) wall is the government’s way of commemorating Daphne.

For try as they might, those who want to obliterate Daphne’s name and her works and death are going about it the wrong way. The more they try, the more Daphne’s memory will go from strength to strength.

Actually, it is much worse than that. For many people are forgetting the comments, the blogposts, where Daphne was at her worst and remembering only her intrepid courage in the face of so many threats she received.

One day, the yellow wall will have to come down. One day, Owen Bonnici will no longer be a minister. And when that day comes, people will forget who Owen Bonnici was but will still remember Daphne as the courageous journalist who got killed by a bomb.

Try harder, Owen.