Just yesterday it was reported that a memorial dedicated to a migrant who was murdered earlier this year in Hal far has been vandalised. There is only one word to describe this action, disgusting.

Lassana Cisse Souleymane was murdered in April as he walked home after offering food and support to migrants at the open centre. Pictures posted on social media on Sunday showed the simple memorial smashed on the ground. The makeshift memorial featured the victim's name together with candles and flowers.

First his murder, and now this act, are tainted marks on Malta as a country, and on the people who live here. While the courts have not yet decided who pulled the trigger on Souleymane, the act itself paints a worrying picture as to the kind of country we are turning into.

Such acts are to be condemned, but the very fact that it occurred shows that someone felt it was right to do so.. If indeed the murder was done purely out of racial hatred, then the country needs to re-examine itself.

Such hatred does not sprout from nowhere. People telling foreigners to “go back to your country,” and looking at someone with disgust purely because of skin colour are just some examples of society going rotten.

If a section of society is segregated enough, then some might see them as ‘inferior’ and think themselves justified for bullying, attacking, or even murdering them. If the us vs them mentality persists, then foreign populations in Malta will not integrate, which would in turn breed distrust between nationalities who live within the same community. That is just part of the rabbit hole that will lead to more hatred and violence.

It is not just a racial issue. Some foreign environmental activists get told to go home if they don’t like what they see by some Maltese people, and this when these activists are actively cleaning up Malta and fighting to make the island better. At the very least that is an absurd comment to make.

Over the past few years the number of foreigners living in Malta has grown exponentially. This has created issues in terms of housing prices. This has resulted in some Maltese not having the ability to keep up with the times as their wages aren’t quite high enough. But don’t take it out on the people moving here to work, it is not their fault. They moved either because they had no choice – in the case of those who receive asylum, or for work – mainly the case when it comes to European  migrants. In the case of the former, there are international laws which Malta is obliged to follow, and it is our duty as human beings to help. In the case of the latter, it is clear that Malta does not have a big enough workforce to cater for the number of jobs available, thus companies had to attract foreign workers. If the issue is with the latter, then the problem is with government’s economic policy, and not with the foreign workers themselves.