Uh-oh. There’s now a whopping great credibility gap between the tourism authority’s advertising campaigns and the kind of news coverage we’re getting in the international press. The tourism bosses are spending large sums of money trying to sell Malta on the basis of the “warm welcome” we give to visitors. It’s true that the warm welcome exists only in their imaginations, and that when paying guests come here they are taken aback by our rudeness, uncouth behaviour and general indifference. But that’s not the point.
You needn’t bother advertising Malta as being wonderfully warm and friendly when the only kind of press coverage we’re getting paints us as a bunch of backward rednecks in a backwater – the equivalent of National Front supporters in Britain or Ku Klux Klan members in one of America’s southern states.
There were two big stories last week: one in The Washington Post and the other in The International Herald Tribune. To embarrass us further, The Washington Post website carried a video-clip of an interview with the ANR’s leader, Martin Degiorgio, talking blithely about “blek Efrikins”. He isn’t even smart enough to work out that when you’re talking to an American journalist, who will be writing for an American audience, given America’s history, its population and culture and its race relations laws, the last thing you should do is speak pejoratively about “black Africans”, or even blek ones.
Mr Degiorgio did not elaborate to The Washington Post whether he is being so specific because, on the other hand, white Africans and black Americans are acceptable to him. But there was no need to do that. “We have never had minorities, and we don’t want minorities,” he told one of the two most influential newspapers in the United States (the other is The New York Times). “Until just three or four years ago, it was almost impossible to find a black African walking in Maltese streets, but nowadays you just have to walk in our capital city and there are many of them.” All together now: cringe.
The journalist from The Washington Post interviewed a woman out with her children. “They don’t like the food we give them,” she said. “They are aggressive with soldiers. They bring different diseases.” Now where have we heard that before? Then the journalist interviewed one of the immigrants. She didn’t ask him whether he likes the food, fights with the soldiers, or carries strange diseases. She asked him instead what he thinks about being here. “You can’t imagine how difficult I find it here,” he told her. “I cannot wait to leave but I don’t know how. I don’t want to be here, and I know that people here don’t want me. I ask myself, ‘Why did I risk my life for this?’ I see the way they look at me on the bus. Some people make you feel so sad.”
And then, two days later, there was another big story, this time in The International Herald Tribune, which has a worldwide readership. “Valletta, Malta – Tourists are greeted with smiles as they fan out of luxury cruise liners in the harbour of this idyllic Mediterranean island,” it began. “But on the other side of town, newly arrived African ‘boat people’ get a different message, written in bright orange graffiti near the entrance of a refugee centre: “Blacks go home”. Warsame Ali Garare, a 27-year-old Somalian migrant, would like to do just that. Rejected by a country that wishes his rickety wooden fishing vessel had never washed ashore, and unable to return to his war-ravaged home, Ali Garare says he feels trapped in a place that has become more prison than paradise. ‘You feel closed in,’ says the quietly articulate former language teacher, who arrived here via Libya two years ago after a six-day sea-journey in which his boat nearly sank. ‘You can’t leave, you can’t go back, and the Maltese people don’t want you here and don’t want to know you. So you try to be invisible and worry about a future that may never come.’”
Yes, it takes an American journalist to notice that the “blek Efricins” are articulate, while the Maltese who were interviewed, so convinced they are superior, are – well, we won’t go into that, will we? Let their words speak instead. “The risk is that the Africans will stay here and become part of us,” said Joseph Muscat, who is described as “a doctor and former Member of Parliament”. Let’s hope it’s a case of mistaken identity, as I shouldn’t like to conclude that someone who campaigns so heartily for the integration of Down’s Syndrome people into our society is fiercely opposed to the integration of black people – unless those black people have Down’s Syndrome, I would imagine.
There was more eloquence in The International Herald Tribune, this time from Martin Degiorgio, described as “a travel agent and amateur historian who participates in mock historical battles re-enacted on the island”. I knew what he did for business, but I hadn’t known anything about what he does for pleasure. It certainly explains a lot. I can just see him pretending to fight the Turks in the Great Siege and wishing he didn’t have to live in the 21st century and sell tours.
Mr Degiorgio recently said how important the ANR is, because all sorts of foreign journalists are interviewing him. He doesn’t seem to realise that it is the importance of a freak show. This is how he was reported in the IHT: “‘We are a close-knit society and the migrants are destroying our culture,’ Degiorgio said from his car, with DVX – the Latin letters for ‘Duce’, the title of the Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini – written on his licence-plate… Degiorgio said he would warn that the Africans risked turning Malta into the toilet of the Mediterranean. ‘Islam took Malta by force, and now the Africans are invading us silently,’ he said.” Mr Degiorgio may sell a lot of trips to other countries, but I don’t think he’s doing much to sell trips to Malta.
Readers of The International Herald Tribune were treated to this description of warmly welcoming Malta. “The arrival of so many migrants in this insular, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country is spawning a backlash. In the past three months, seven cars at the Jesuit Refugee Service have been covered in gasoline and set ablaze, and volunteers who work with the migrants have had their homes set on fire. Last month, a Congolese man said a local motorist deliberately tried to run him over. A few months ago, stacks of fliers signed ‘KKK’ for Ku Klux Klan were thrown into the entrance of the Marsa refugee centre here. The pamphlets told illegal immigrants to ‘get out or we will start killing you’. A local far-right leader, Norman Lowell, said in January 2005 that refugee boats should be prevented from docking and, after a warning, sunk if necessary.”
The International Herald Tribune spoke to Fr Paul Pace, who heads the Jesuit Refugee Service. He told the journalist: “We get 1.2 million tourists each year – more than three times our population – and have no fear of foreigners. But the Maltese like them as long as they aren’t black.”
Meanwhile, Ali Garare has taught himself Maltese to add to the other five languages he speaks already. Interestingly, our far-right leaders and the odds and sods who follow them continue to believe that they are superior to him because he is black and they are – well, not white exactly, but all shades of brown and that elderly person’s cardigan colour, fawn. This is what makes me so cross about white – sorry, fawn – supremacists. Most of them are pig-ignorant, barely educated, incoherent and inarticulate, and yet they think they are superior purely because they are “white”. It’s because of their absolute lack of anything to feel superior about that they are forced to resort to feeling superior about their skin colour. Perhaps we should just feel sorry for them, but I don’t think so.
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Joanne Micallef, prolific writer of letters to the newspapers on the issue of illegal immigration, has revealed herself on Xarabank as a member of the ANR. No wonder she was so keen to pounce on me publicly for saying that it was the fascists who tried to burn my house down (with us inside it), and no wonder she leapt so quickly to the defence of Arlette Baldacchino – whom Norman Lowell calls his “Etoile” – when I wrote about her recently. Indeed, when I think about it, every letter written in support of Arlette, and published in this newspaper a couple of weeks ago, came from supporters and activists of the ANR and of Lowell’s Imperium Europa. Gosh, what a surprise. I just wish they would declare their interest, instead of pretending to be genuinely disinterested readers. Arlette repaid the compliment by turning up to bolster the meagre numbers at the ANR “rally of thousands”, joined to Norman Lowell’s hip, of course. He repaid a compliment of his own, by telling the Xarabank cameras that when he and “Etoile” call a rally, it will be enormous. Golly, I can’t wait. I’m beginning to think that the two of them are seriously deluded, with all this talk about taking over the country and the world. First we’ll take Valletta, then we’ll take Manhattan. Ajma, jahasra.
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Joanne Micallef – who demonstrated on Xarabank that she has a fighting voice where others have a speaking voice – signs herself off as living in Sliema. I called an older family member, who was born there and has lived there for almost 70 years, to see minn ta’ min hi. The reply I got was: “Ma’ nafx. Forsi wahda minn dawn il-godda li gew issa, li nghidilhom ‘ta’ fuq il-Front’.” To my relative’s perplexity, I thought this was hilarious. I’m still laughing about it. There are various levels of insularity, you see – from the macro to the micro. While Ms Micallef is working very hard to get outsiders sent back where they came from - arms akimbo, finger in your face, shrieking and squeaking on Xarabank – here she is, being dismissed by a Slimiza as a suspected outsider herself, along with all those other outsiders ta’ fuq il-Front li gew issa. At least no one has stuck up a sign saying: “Joanne Micallef – go back to where you came from.”
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A man of 41 has pleaded guilty to the violent indecent assault of a 21-year-old woman. He has been given a prison sentence of one year, suspended for two years. He asked the court to ban the publication of his name, because he is fostering a young girl and plans to adopt her. The prosecution did not object to his request, so the court has banned the media from making his name known.
It is precisely because this man is fostering a girl, who he plans to adopt, that his name should be made known – at least to the adoption authorities. Banning the publication of his name might have made sense if the girl were his own natural child, who had to be spared the embarrassment brought on by her father’s accosting a woman half his age. The same argument does not apply when the child is not his own – rather the opposite. Consideration has to be given to the thought that this girl might be at risk. Has this man asked for his identity to be protected so as to shield the girl from harm, or to avoid ruining his chances of adopting her?
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We’re funny about adoptions. The hearts of many would-be loving parents are broken when they are ruled out for adoption because they live in unorthodox relationships. Then people like that ghastly pair, who imported a couple of little girls so that the husband could shag them while she looked the other way (or got a perverse thrill out of it – who knows?) slip through the net, because they’re married. To take it as read that married people are the only ideal parents is to ignore the abundant evidence to the contrary. And now we have this man – is he married or not? – with his suspended prison sentence for giving a very young woman his unwanted physical attentions, trying to adopt his foster daughter. Perhaps somebody from social services should run along immediately and interview that child. At any rate, a close eye should be kept on her. This man, whoever he is, hasn’t exactly proved himself to be a safe pair of hands in which to place a girl. And then we wonder how bad things happen.