From Mr G. Borg

Jesus had a habit of making valid points. He once pointed out to his audience how the rich man, who ostentatiously made expensive donations at the temple, deserved much less credit than the unnoticed poor woman who gave little but much more than she could afford.

Many Maltese gave money to the Red Cross or to l-Istrina in aid of to the hungry survivors of the Asian tsunami. Many donations were anonymous but collectively we prided ourselves, as we tend to do, of the – we seem to think – world famous generosity and sense of solidarity of the Maltese. Our media consistently acknowledges our collective greatness and by implication the rest of the population wallows in the collective gratification of our own self-importance. We collectively showed off our generosity, not unlike the rich man who gave generously but for the wrong reasons: for his own gratification and for his community’s admiration.

What we did as a nation for the victims of the Asian tsunami was also for the wrong reasons. We packed tuna and paracetamol and auctioned off paintings, which we bought for a little over the market price because we liked to think that we would not need to do anything more for the victims of the tsunami. What we sent off to Asia did not affect the lifestyle of any one of us and was but a drop in the ocean considering the needs of the children and families who lost everything of the little that they ever had. And our conscience, stung by the dramatic pictures on TV, is now clear.

The numbers of newly orphaned children, the spread of disease and the impoverished economies shocked us all. Yet few wanted to hear the remarks made by Africa campaigners that those numbers, one-off figures for the hard-hit Indian littoral, are merely weekly statistics in Africa.

Africa is a continent where whole stretches several times the size of Europe have been at constant war for 30 years; half the population in those stretches is infected with HIV or dying of AIDS. To mention a few examples: 78 per cent of Kenyans, 60 per cent of Nigerians, 79 per cent of Senegalese, 92 per cent of Ugandans and 98 per cent of Zambians feed their families with less than 66 Maltese cents a

day. These people need our

help every day of every week. Pictures from their front gardens are as shocking as anything that happened in Indonesia and in Thailand two weeks ago, but they happen every day and have made our collective conscience numb.

So numb, that we have no sympathy with people who try to run away from their miserable plight in Africa, looking for at least some possibility of feeding their families back home. The soldiers beating the living daylights out of defenceless, unarmed, unresisting detainees on Thursday were but an extreme version of our collective contempt for people who are pursuing nothing but their right to live.

The soldiers using their truncheons on Thursday were but our own version of the Storm Troopers of the SS in Poland 65 years ago. It should surprise no one that volunteer armies, whether wearing Nazi or Maltese uniforms, will behave in exactly the same way, given the chance. It should also not come as a surprise that Maltese bystanders would behave in exactly the same way, given the chance.

Friday’s The Times reported the scene in the hospital’s casualty ward – soldiers who had just bashed the heads of their helpless victims were now standing by them as they groaned and winced in pain on their stretchers. “The soldiers then had a brief conversation with a couple waiting for the radiographer close to where the illegal immigrants were waiting. ‘They attacked us,’ one of the soldiers told a woman who in turn complained it was their fault and that nobody had asked them to come to Malta.”

The violent, lying soldiers are but an extreme representation of the rest of us. But that woman in the casualty ward: she is not extreme at all. She is ideally representative of the rest of us.

There are a few things that can be clearly deduced from The Times’ en passant report of this conversation. This woman saw several people who were clearly in severe pain, with blood gushing from their wounds; some were unconscious; most could not stand without help; all needed urgent medical attention.

She also saw soldiers: sweaty and angry. None of them were wounded. The Times pointedly remarked that one of the soldiers had “his shirt hanging out of his trousers,” which was the only damage soldiers appeared to have sustained in the incident.

What did the woman think when faced with these images? Did she feel sceptical hearing the version of the obviously lying soldier? Did she feel any sympathy for the wounded victims and at least a shred of anger for the sweaty perpetrators? Of course she did not.

She thought the immigrants deserved that treatment because they had showed up on our shores uninvited. For the crime they committed of coming here, she said they deserved to be beaten. She probably – and now, admittedly, I start to speculate – thought that had the immigrants stayed in their own country she would not have to wait so long to have her ingrowing toe nail seen to.

That woman would have cheered on the SS as they humiliated and beat up the old Jewish man living next door. She

is Hitler’s willing executioner. And she is doing it on your behalf.

Think about it. What are the chances that that woman called l-Istrina to give Lm5 to the tsunami victims? Even, I would say. Her conscience is now settled. And probably so is yours.

The protest of the immigrants in Safi on Thursday was legitimate. They left their country in pursuit of a fundamental human right, which we have a sacred duty to protect – the right to live – as indeed many Maltese have done in past decades, searching for a future their own country could not offer them. For pursuing their fundamental human rights we locked them up in cages that are little better than the Warsaw ghetto. For protesting we bashed their heads with truncheons and calmly said they deserved it while they groaned in pain.

Open those cages. Let them out. They are not criminals. They have done nothing wrong. They have done what we would have done had we started our lives in the misery, disease and starvation that killed members of our own family.

The people who think they have earned their place in heaven by giving away a six-pack of tuna cans, should think about what the Maltese reputedly did when a real criminal was shipwrecked on Malta on his way, under arrest, to his trial in Rome and swam ashore, not unlike most of these immigrants. The Maltese who fancy themselves Christians should call on their government to let these people go and to invite them in their own homes to tend to their needs and help them live with dignity.

Only then will we deserve

our own collective self-praise as a nation of solidarity and

generosity. You are either Hitler’s willing executioner or you

are willing to stand up to that despicable show of authority exercised on your behalf last Thursday and offer to host immigrants in your own home, feed them, let them work and live in your community as Maltese people do in England, Australia, America and elsewhere. We will not deserve the medal we have given ourselves as a nation of solidarity until such time that our homes become their homes, our country becomes their country and we would be prepared to go hungry for their right to eat and die for their right to live.

George Borg