From Mr J. M. Bencini

I read with great pleasure what Minister Tonio Borg told Parliament recently when he spoke about the shameful events that occurred in Malta in 1942. Sixty-five years ago, on 13 February 1942 to be precise, 41 Maltese were deported and exiled to Uganda by the British colonial government.

My grandfather, Captain Alfred Bencini, was one of them. Together with the others, he was taken to the Royal Navy ship the HMS Breconshire and ordered to stay in the hold of the ship, meaning they would be first to perish if the ship was torpedoed by the enemy. Strangely enough, his nephew Effie Bencini, then a police officer, was detailed to arrest my grandfather.

Alfred Bencini, Captain of the Royal Anglians during the First World War, returned to Malta a few years later a very sick man, suffering mainly from malaria. I vividly remember as a young boy the stories my grandfather used to narrate about his ordeals in Uganda and how he and the other Maltese were humiliated by the British.

Dr Tonio Borg was right to commemorate the vicissitudes of these brave Maltese citizens who were interned by the British colonial power. On 4 May 1942, the Appeals Court of Justice decided that the British governor’s decision to exile these Maltese was ultra vires. But the British colonial government had already decided to deport them without waiting for the Appeals Court judgement. This was a very black chapter in the history of these islands.

Similar actions were carried out in Canada and the United States, yet a few years ago these two countries made a public apology to American and Canadian citizens. President Ronald Reagan, in August 1988, and Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney in November 1990, had the courage to make a public apology so that similar events would never occur in the future.

John M. Bencini

MSIDA