The SHout campaign is relentlessly raising hell to try and stop hunting in Malta.
To add insult to injury they are indulging in dirty tricks such as exaggerations in numbers, untruths, provocations, bombastic alarmism, misleading statements and hysterical outburst by people who have even been advised in court to stop acting hysterical and advised to see a psychiatrist.
Joe Public must be made aware that among the SHout campaigners, there are declared abolitionists who many years back had declared that they will not stop their campaign against hunting and trapping until these are completely abolished in Malta.
This is most unfair. By what authority or right can these abolitionists do this?
The SHout campaign has now degenerated into an intense investment in the hatred of all the hunting community in Malta and all that is associated with it, like private land ownership.
They never speak of the minimal numbers of quails and turtle-doves we Maltese hunters harvest.
Numbers so minimal that the European Court of Justice has found to be negligible and of no significance in relation to the respective status of both species and thus these learned judges declared that Malta has a right to derogate for spring hunting within the parameters allowed under the Birds Directive.
The negativity towards hunters that some SHout campaigners are intent on creating, has wrongly and disappointingly, attracted some well-known personalities and entities to affiliate themselves with their campaign. I wonder how these supposedly exemplary persons are actually at peace with the fact that they have affiliated not with environmentalists but with abolitionists.
Also worthy of note is that spring covers 2,184 hours but the spring hunting season only covers 162 hours, hardly 8%. Apart from these heavily restricted times, the quota for each hunter is again minimal, four birds, quails and or turtle-doves for all the season. Many do not even manage to get that.
The abolitionists know very well that the hunters' figures have been scientifically proven correct. So the SHout campaigners have turned their campaign against the illegalities and not at what they know is legally and morally acceptable even to the highest European Court. The referendum question is about quail and turtle-dove hunting and not about illegalities which are and will always remain illegal.
And why, may I ask, are we being told to keep politics out of this issue? Was it not a political issue when ALL political parties wooed hunters pre and post EU entry?
Were we not guaranteed spring hunting by Eddie Fenech Adami, Simon Busuttil and Joseph Muscat and all election candidates who are now sitting pretty in our Parliament as our representatives? Do we not have a right to know who of these representatives is pro spring hunting or not? Or is it now ok for us to be stabbed in the back?
Saviour Balzan is very biased to state that hunters want to stop the time clock, when he knows very well that in the last couple of decades all hunting regulations have evolved positively in no small bound. Court sentencing, fines and imprisonments reflect all these facts. In all his "anti" campaign he never refers to bona fide hunters but always only refers to illegalities.
Do we now therefore please Saviour and speed our clock forward to copy other countries and allow say, abortion, just to be "in modern times"?
Also, Saviour should not waste any crocodile tears for Stanley Zammit. It was not the hunters who ousted Dr Zammit. It was the stabbing in his back by his colleagues.
Finally, let this referendum be an eye opener to all, because this is only the first declared move by these abolitionists who will not stop at anything being abolished as they will fancy. Abolitionists are extremists and extremists can breed terrorists.
Mario Vella
Naxxar