As you read this on a Sunday morning, what will still be uppermost in your mind, the hunters’ violence against photographers and journalists on Wednesday evening or the local council election results? The former fills me with shame, concern and anger, the latter with utter disillusion and disinterest.

Because if you looked at the papers on Thursday morning as I did, a split Malta was there for you all to see in all its blazing shame and ingloriousness. It wasn’t the split between red and blue they keep telling us about. It was the language split between those who want to read in the far less biased news in the English language press, and those who want to read the totally partisan press in Maltese (with the exception of the Church press and Illum on Sunday, which is the only voice to show us you can be Maltese reading and non partisan!). It was the educated and thinking split, it was the split between Malta as it still is, and the Malta we hoped it would slowly start to become once we voted to become members of the EU.

In the English language press, The Times was unequivocal – “Hunters assault journalists”. In The Independent, the heading was “Shameful”.

It was justifiably front page news in the English language press, that after years of peace on our streets brought about and supported equally by Dr Fenech Adami, Dr Gonzi and Dr Alfred Sant we had to witness such terrible, unfounded and totally unjustified bullying and aggression, not against the anti hunting lobby after all, but just journalists reporting the event. After all there was nothing to provoke the hunters. No posters saying “Ban hunting forever.” Why attack journalists?

And yet on the front pages of our Maltese language press, in our partisan media, there was nothing about the attacks on journalists and photographers.

Nothing in the Nazzjon, nothing in l'orizzont. Oh yes. The Nazzjon, even more cynically on the front page, told us what the new spring hunting dates were going to be, as headline news no less. Unbelievably sickening, but true. True the photographer who was most injured was from the English language press, but it is inconceivable that anyone editing a newspaper in this country would practically ignore acts of violence against journalists and photographers, or not give it the prominence it deserved. Those editors and the political parties that support them should hang their heads down collectively in abject shame. Will they?

If newspaper editors in the Maltese language partisan press, and the political parties which bankroll them do not give front page prominence to journalists being attacked who will? Is that why journalists were attacked, because a minority of hunters felt their vote buying powers would buy editors and political parties too? It is simply too much of a coincidence that both the Nazzjon and l’orizzont chose not to give front-page prominence to these attacks. It shows us all in black and white, and in red and in blue the utter limitation of this vote buying democracy of ours where red and blue meet to form a shameful purple.

I am actually even more disgusted at this front-page news boycott by our partisan media than I am with the hunters. It’s the same with the Church protecting paedophile issue. Paedophiles fill me with revulsion sure, but most of them are twisted, many have been abused themselves. Yet the Church does not hand over those accused of paedophilia immediately to the police. It protects them. So the Church is even more disappointing than the paedophiles because it is not mentally ill, it should know better. And our partisan media is supposedly educated, so it is more to blame than the hunters because it should know better, it should put journalism first but when push came to shove it didn’t. It put votes before journalists’ well being!

Let us say too that the majority of hunters were peaceful. But a few were not. A few were dangerous. A few must be stopped, not only by the forces of law and order but also by all the right thinking freedom loving people of the Maltese Islands. The hunters admittedly have a hobby I don’t like, but we all do need to grow up and accept there are hunters in all the EU countries, some of whom break the law as much as ours do.

Malta though is terribly small so hunting is in your face. You see men with enormous guns walking up the Swatar bypass in the early morning just back from doing whatever gives them such a kick. I never hear birdsong anymore, and I have moved back to the area I was brought up in and the natural silence is palpable. It is not just because of the hunters though. It is also due to massive construction. There are no trees anymore, few homes for birds. Today we only hear cars, building site construction, and the odd frustrated dog that wants to be taken out for a walk.

We can’t turn back time but we can say no to this kind of vote buying can’t we?

I would like to see both Dr Sant and Dr Gonzi telling people what is possible and what is not. We don’t need to ban hunting forever, repulsive though it is to me. We need to ban violence against journalists forever though. We need to live our faith. We need to respect each other in words and in deeds. We need to move away from cynical purple politics. We need to do what is right by us, for ourselves, for our children, and for the children of hunters too. Hunters can threaten not to vote. Many more of us will not vote either in a country held to ransom by the men with guns and, most disgracefully of all, being appeased by our partisan media, which I for one will never read again! I do hope that this Sunday or next our priests will condemn this violence from our Church pulpits, I do hope our leaders and readers will continue to do so too, as well as the former instructing the partisan press that by not giving this story front-page prominence they are in fact digging their own grave, the grave of all of our freedoms.

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