The government is to be commended for the stance it took yesterday when it denied entry and cooperation with a ship belonging to an anti-immigrant organisation.

It was only a matter of time before the ship, which has been lurking in the vicinity of Malta with a mission to stop refugees reaching Europe by obstructing NGO vessels from rescuing migrants, would seek to pay a port call in Malta.

That eventuality took place yesterday and the government, presumably prepared for such an eventuality, refused to allow it entry because of, to quote a government spokesperson, “everything it stands for”.

The ship is in no need of humanitarian aid and it is not suffering any kind of emergency, but had that been the case, the government stressed it would lend it the support it is obliged to do at law.

The news of Malta’s refusal to allow the ship entry was being reported yesterday from the US to China, and it has provided a sterling example of how people or organisations of this ilk should be dealt with.

It would have been far easier to have allowed the ship a quiet entry into Malta and to have not entered into the polemic that arose with the ship’s owners, the so-called Defend Europe, heavily criticising the government’s stance. A petition was also doing the rounds in Malta, organised by the usual suspects, but it had fortunately gained little traction by yesterday evening.

Figures show that at least 2,300 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean last year, often setting out in makeshift or crowded vessels, in their bid to reach the shores of EU countries. And yet this ship, the C-Star, would seek to scuttle NGOs’ rescue efforts, seemingly happier to see people drowned at sea rather than be brought o Europe to exercise their lawful right to claim asylum.

This government has certainly come a long way since the early days of its first administration when it had booked two Air Malta flights to forcibly repatriate a large number of the adult male migrants that had just arrived on the island back to Libya.

From the Valletta Summit to an EU Summit held in Malta to address the migration crisis, Malta has sought to take the bull by the horns, with arguably mixed results. But the intentions have albeit seemed to have been in the right place.

A number of Maltese non-governmental organisations yesterday heaped praise on the government for its stance, many of which were the same NGOs, if memory serves, that had lambasted the government back in 2013 for its threatened forced repatriation stunt, and had even secured an interim cease and desist order against the government.

They said yesterday: “Under the deceptive premise of ‘saving lives’, the mission of the vessel C-Star claims to ‘defend Europe’ by disrupting humanitarian vessels and by returning refugees to the coast of Libya. The scope and actions of Defend Europe must not be under-estimated; their political ideology is dangerous and extreme. The stance adopted by the Government of Malta sends out a clear message against the politics of hate and extremism.”

This newspaper concurs fully.

Just as when Malta had refused entry to the Russian warship headed for war-ravaged Syria, the government in this case is undoubtedly on the right side of history.

Defend Europe now says that it will move its ship to another port in France or Croatia tomorrow.  Let us hope those countries take a page out of Malta’s book and also refuse it entry, so that Europe sends the collective message that these people’s actions are both unwarranted and unwanted.