And it’s been shot. The lesser-spotted eagle who survived a shooting at Birzebbuga has raised the stakes in this game and has put hunters even further beyond the pale. The indifference that the mass of the population once felt towards birds and bird-shooters has now gone for good. Nor do most distinguish between legal and illegal hunting, because they hate the lot. Bird-shooting, whether it’s the legal shooting of a turtle dove or the illegal shooting of an eagle, is disruptive and damaging.
The eagle made the news because it is one of those reared from infancy at huge expense in a project run by the Brandenburg Environment Ministry in Germany, funded by German taxpayers and by EU funds. It has been returned to Brandenburg, where this incident has caused uproar. The environment minister there, Dietmar Woidke, is pressing the German federal government to protest officially to its Maltese counterpart. There are only 30 breeding pairs of the lesser-spotted eagle in Brandenburg, and 115 pairs in the whole of Germany. Mr Woidke said in Potsdam last week: “Uncontrolled bird-hunting in Malta is countering our efforts to protect the species”.
That he should be so furious is understandable. Brandenburg has spent a million euros on conservation efforts, with chicks being hand-reared and then released into the wild – only to be shot at in Malta. The one shot in Birzebbuga had been hand-reared last July; all that care, expense and attention risked in a flight over Malta.
To the more primitive elements of Maltese society, a bird is a bird is a bird. There’s no difference to them between the pigeons on their roof and a rare eagle. If it’s flying about in the air, then it’s ‘free’ and they have a right to shoot it. It’s the kind of mentality people had a century ago, which is why so many species were wiped out through indiscriminate shooting. They don’t seem to understand that, far from being the property of no one, birds are public property – and not just Maltese public property, either. Because they don’t understand this, they cannot grasp the root of the growing general resentment against them. They are killing – stealing – birds that ‘belong’ to us all.
A spokesman for the British-based International Animal Rescue told The Daily Telegraph: “Numerous migrant birds of prey have been killed or injured (in Malta) since the season opened. The range of breaches of the law observed by our eight teams (in Malta) included shots fired after the afternoon curfew at 1500 hours, the use of banned electronic lure devices and the deliberate shooting at migrating birds of prey by several hunters at a time.” Heinze Schwarze, who is president of the Committee Against Bird Slaughter in Germany told journalists that he was amazed at how many hunters in Malta deliberately and blatantly broke the law. “It demonstrates a complete disrespect for the rule of law and a high level of criminal energy,” he said.
The stakes have been ratcheted higher still by the shooting two days ago in Mellieha of ranger Ray Vella. He was at Mizieb, the park where shooting is banned and where people just love to rip up trees and set fire to them, when he heard a shot and was hit in the face by pellets. He looked up and saw a man with a rifle running away. Vella began to yell at him, but the man kept running, turning round only to shout out insults and abuse against the ranger and “your organisation”. Yes, that is what we have come to. Now it’s not just protected bird species which are being illegally shot at, but also park rangers.
It was only a matter of time. Anti-bird-shooting activists have been at the receiving end of threats and violence over the years, and there have been several episodes of vandalism which have been linked to hunters. Press photographers were beaten and had their camera equipment stolen at a protest march by hunters some months ago.
It will get worse before it gets better. People depend on the police to clamp down and put the fear of the law into these people. Yet too often, the police are let down by the law courts, where the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, even if the person is found guilty in the first place, which is not often.
A park ranger has been shot at, and the man who did it obviously had the confidence that goes with feelings of impunity. They’ll never catch me, he probably tells himself, and even if they do, they can never prove it because Ray Vella will never recognise me. That’s the dreadful thing about the situation we are in, with violence committed against those who stand up for what is right: the perpetrators get away with it time and time again. Now they are not even doing it in darkness, as they did when they left dead birds of prey and cow dung at a birdwatchers’ observation point in Dwejra. Vella was shot at in broad daylight.
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There was more cause to wonder about the worst of the elements in this island with the news that the pet animals of the disabled children at Ir-Razzett tal-Hbiberija have been stolen. Somebody removed the barbed wire, climbed over the boundary wall, and lifted out three barn owls, two golden pheasants, five mountain goats, a parrot, a rabbit and a monkey. These are all animals for which there is a ready market – and they can always turn the rabbit into a Sunday fenkata after mass. There was another animal, but it was of no use to them – a deer for which there is no market in Malta. Nor could they lift it out over the wall and take it back home to turn into venison. So what did they do? They beat it to death. It was found with multiple wounds to the head and stomach.
You would think that an animal wouldn’t meet such a hideous fate in the park of a therapy camp for disabled kids. But this is Malta, and you would be wrong. You can tell me that these things happen everywhere, and yes, they do. But you cannot convince me that there is not a disproportionately great element of covert and overt violence here, and a deep-rooted lack of respect for life and for other people’s property. We are speaking here of a population of 400,000 – the size of a small town in Europe – and we hear of some fresh ugliness almost every day. Perversely and contradictorily, this sits side by side with the claim that we are the most religious country in Europe. Or perhaps there is nothing contradictory about it, at all.
* * *
And that brings me to the latest issue of Flimkien, the parish magazine which was popped through the letterboxes in Lija (and perhaps everywhere else, too, for all I know). My sister ripped out a page about exorcism and sent it to me with a note scribbled at the top: “Psychiatrists and psychologists referring patients to an exorcist? They need to have their own heads examined.”
The article was written by the well-known Maltese exorcist Patri Elija Vella, under the heading It-taqbida ghadha sejra (The battle goes on). Apparently Satan is still taking time off from murder, mayhem, genocide, torture and cocaine-trafficking to amuse himself by popping into people’s stomachs and making them fall about and speak in strange contorted voices straight out of The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. Well, I never.
The article tells us that there are six exorcists in Malta, and there is strong demand for them. It seems that our national hysteria does not extend only to multiple sightings of Madeleine McCann in a variety of black wigs and other guises, but also to the conviction that we are possessed by devils. As Patri Elija put it, in prose well decorated with exclamation marks: “God forbid that all those who come to us convinced that they have a devil inside them should really have one! If that were the case, then I would have to conclude that all the devils are on a mission in Malta!”
Sensibly, Patri Elija points out that most of these people just have a fixation, and like to blame everything bad that happens to them “on the devil”. Maybe he should explain to them that, theoretically at least, having a devil inside you means that you become the agent of evil, rather than the recipient of it. But never mind – these are the finer points of a rather odd subject. He does explain that this is often used as a comfortable excuse that allows people to brush off all responsibility for their actions, by blaming it on the devil. We have even seen that kind of thing in court: “Ittantani x-xitan”. (The devil tempted me.)
Patri Elija also explains that many others are cases of psychiatric illness. Yet he says we would be “boloh” (idiots) to exclude all thought of satanic possession. “Psychologists and psychiatrists are outside their remit in expecting to solve all of these cases,” he writes, as though the role of a psychiatrist is that of a sleuth armed with psychotropic drugs. Reasonably, he writes that faith cannot interfere in science, but then he claims that the reverse is true, and that science cannot enter the realm of faith. The realm of faith, apparently, includes the casting out of devils. “The fact that true cases of possession are very rare does not mean that they don’t exist,” he writes. Perhaps – but first you must take it as a given that devils exist, when nowadays devils are largely seen as a primitive means of explaining evil to pre-literate societies, by giving an abstract concept an anthropomorphic dimension which they could understand. In 2007, people can understand abstract concepts and they don’t need to have evil explained away to them as a horned creature with hooves and a trident, who entertains himself in between bouts of turning people on a hot griddle by making them speak in strange tongues or foam at the mouth.
Worryingly, Patri Elija writes that he and his five other exorcist friends work hand-in-hand with psychiatrists and psychologists, who refer patients to the exorcists when they realise that they can no longer deal with them. What on earth does this mean? Please don’t tell me that there are psychiatrists in Malta who believe that devils can possess people, and that they can be cast out by a whole load of chanted mumbo-jumbo and a bunch of other rituals that belong in Haitian voodoo. What a strange island this is, and I mean that truly: animal thieves beating a deer to death in a park for disabled children, a hunter shooting a park ranger in the face and running off shouting abuse, protected species being shot all over the place, and now, parish magazines ranting on about the casting out of devils in a place with one of the highest rates of internet use and connectivity in Europe. The internet generation of animal-killers, giving birth to Rosemary’s baby (because it doesn’t use condoms).