Prejudice against those who are not Maltese is not always as overt as it is in the speeches made by Josie Muscat, Philip Beattie, Norman Lowell and Martin de Giorgio. It manifests itself in more subtle ways, as in the reporting by newspapers. I have no doubt that it is unconscious, rather than deliberate, but it reveals how people think.
Whenever a non-Maltese person is charged with committing a crime, his or her nationality goes into the headline or the all-important opening sentence. The same thing happens when a non-Maltese is involved in an accident or some other drama. On the other hand, when the person involved is Maltese, the nationality isn’t mentioned at all, but taken for granted. For example, two men face charges for attacking their wives. One man is Tunisian, the other man is Maltese. The heading to the newspaper report concerning the first man will read: “Tunisian accused of attacking wife”. The report about the Maltese man will read: “Man accused of attacking wife”.
By specifying the nationality of the person in the headline or the opening sentence, the newspaper makes that nationality part of the story, when it isn’t. It also indicates a revealing prejudice that might even be subconscious. Let’s take the stories carried last week. “A Syrian was yesterday charged with repeatedly beating his partner, threatening to kill her and causing her to miscarry” – The Times, last Thursday. “Japanese diver dies at Cirkewwa. A 25-year-old Japanese man died yesterday morning after he found himself in difficulty while diving off Cirkewwa” – The Times, yesterday. “Frenchman tells police plane left Malta in container. A Frenchman told the police he exported two planes from Malta to the Ivory Coast for them (sic) to be used for initial military training and not as combat aircraft by the Ivorian air force, a police officer said in court yesterday” – The Times, last Friday. “A 24-year-old Libyan was jailed for eight months and fined Lm200 for possession of cannabis resin with the intent (sic) to sell it” – The Times, last Wednesday. “A Romanian was yesterday conditionally discharged for two years after he pleaded guilty to stealing money from three local banks (sic again – that should be ‘banks in Malta’)” – The Times, last Friday. “A Libyan was yesterday charged with assaulting and slightly injuring three police officers on Saturday morning” – The Times, last Tuesday.
Now compare that reporting with the following. “A man, who had been jailed for three months for not allowing his estranged wife into their matrimonial home, had his punishment reduced...” – The Times, last Wednesday. “A 21-year-old man has been given a six-month suspended jail term after a magistrate heard how he bought ecstasy pills from a stranger …” – The Times, last Thursday. “A man yesterday explained in court how another man smashed a glass in his face and then told him to stay away from his son …” – The Times, last Thursday. “A man found guilty of breaching bail (sic) has filed a constitutional application…” – The Times, last Thursday. “A man yesterday admitted to repeatedly threatening to kill his wife and threatening (sic) to take their daughter and burn down their matrimonial home” – The Times, last Friday. “Three men in their 30s were yesterday arraigned over (sic) raping a 17-year-old girl while one of them was charged with prostituting her” – The Times, last Wednesday. “A 52-year-old man was yesterday charged with threatening to kill his wife and son and instilling fear in them” – The Times, last Wednesday. “A 41-year-old man was jailed for two years for defrauding a man of about Lm6000” – The Times, last Tuesday. “Two young men were yesterday charged with seriously injuring a man in a Paceville discotheque last week” – The Times, last Tuesday. “A man was conditionally discharged for six months after he admitted to stealing a wallet that a client had forgotten at a bank” – The Times, last Friday. “A 37-year-old man was yesterday charged with cultivating cannabis plants” – The Times, last Friday. “A woman has been given a one-year jail term suspended for two years for seriously injuring her estranged husband when she broke a frame on his head” – The Times, last Friday. “A woman was given an 18-month jail term suspended for three years for seriously injuring her neighbour in the face when she hit her with a bunch of keys” – The Times, last Friday. “A 34-year-old man was yesterday cleared of trafficking in heroin 10 years ago” – The Times, yesterday.
The common factor in this last lot of stories is that the people involved were Maltese – but we didn’t get “A Maltese man was charged with threatening to kill his wife” in the same way that we got “A Syrian man was charged with repeatedly beating his partner”. No, he was described instead as a “52-year-old man” – even though his age is about as relevant as his nationality. And the report of the Maltese man charged with cannabis possession began “A 37-year-old man was yesterday charged with cultivating cannabis plants”, while that about the Libyan man in a similar case began “A 24-year-old Libyan was jailed for eight months and fined Lm200 for possession of cannabis resin”.
I’m sorry if I have to be a little pedantic in listing all these reports, but nothing speaks louder or clearer than the facts – and when the reports are brought together like this, the unnecessary and undesirable focus on the nationality of “foreigners” who make the news for negative reasons is very obvious indeed. I’m not saying that each time a Maltese man runs after his wife with a knife, the newspaper reports should describe him as Maltese in the headline or the first sentence. What I am saying is the opposite of that: that nobody should be described by his or her nationality, unless in the unusual circumstance that it is pertinent to the story. Otherwise, it comes across as being done to make the point that Syrians beat their wives and that Libyans traffic in drugs.
The most dangerous propaganda is the insidious, unwitting kind. Those who have become obsessed with the notion that Malta is being overrun by dangerous foreigners look at these stories and register the Syrian who beat his wife and the Libyan who dealt in drugs. If you don’t believe me, just see the discussion on the Viva Malta website forum, where feverish paranoia has unbalanced rational judgment. They don’t register the higher number of Maltese accused of violent crimes involving a spouse, a child, or a vulnerable woman. Their focus is only on the outsiders, whom they very mistakenly see as being mainly responsible for crime.
It is pointless to expect rationality at a time when irrationality is escalating, with mounting religious hysteria and extreme right-wingers marching their opinions all over the public sphere. It is pointless reminding people that most of the problems in this country are caused by Maltese people, not by “foreigners”, and that the most violent and criminal elements of our society are Maltese, and not Libyan, Syrian, or sub-Saharan African. Just look at the court reports of the past few days, which I’ve listed here. But when people are subsumed into irrational hatred and fear, they cease to think straight.
The classic example of this was when a boy went to prison for the ugly murder of a well-known hairdresser, a middle-aged man, some years ago. The boy was Libyan and the hairdresser was Maltese. The country buzzed with dark mutterings about threatening and evil Libyans from a strange culture, roaming the streets with their daggers drawn. Fathers warned their young daughters or locked them up; housewives padlocked their front doors. All Libyan males became highly suspect. I ended up in a terrific argument with one such father when I told him that what he should really be doing was warning his pubescent son against the perils of (Maltese) men cruising for boys after dark while pretending to be married and respectable. All for nothing: it was a “Jews poison wells and kill children” scenario straight out of the Middle Ages.
The boy got a life sentence, and the hairdresser was given the next best thing to a state funeral, televised on Super One and attended by the Labour Party’s leaders. Nobody stopped to face the serious and pertinent moral issues. It seemed that to most, and they called to berate me when I wrote about it, the scandal was that a Libyan had killed a secular saint who performed miracles with a blow-drier. To me, the scandal was something else entirely: that a married middle-aged man with children, who had a prominent place in public life and was seen as something of a star, went out cruising at night to pick up young North African boys, whom he took back to his salon for sex, paying them for the service. That last boy clearly acted out of revulsion and in extremis, but with popular perception weighed against him and in favour of his victim, and because he didn’t speak the language nor have the best defence, he didn’t stand a chance in pleading mitigating circumstances. For him, there was no compassion, though there was plenty for the man who wanted to pay him to do things that went against his heterosexual inclinations.
The case is a particularly good example of how racism and homophobia cause us to take confused stances on issues of morality. The homophobia in our society at the time drove that man into the closet of marriage and children, while giving vent to his frustrations under cover of darkness and with the anonymity of non-Maltese strangers. When it ended up terribly, as it inevitably must with secrets and lies, racism in that same society left people in absolutely no doubt who the victim was: the dead man, rather than the boy in prison. Both were victims, I argued, and for a myriad of reasons, not just the fact that one was dead and the other in prison. But prejudice can make us cross-eyed. If it had been a Libyan man paying a vulnerable Maltese boy for sex, and then being murdered, we would have reacted to the case in terms of Libyan perverts – not to use another word beginning with ‘p’ – coming to Malta and preying on Maltese boys, and we would have said that in ending up like that he got what he had coming to him.
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Would somebody please gag Tonio Borg and lock him in a small dark soundproofed room for the next few months? Every time he opens his mouth or comes up with another bright idea for getting his name into the news, he makes another few hundred people with liberal views, who once voted for the Nationalist Party, determined not to vote for it again. Why do we always hear him on the issue of migration from Africa, rather than the Prime Minister? Tonio Borg is looming large, while Lawrence Gonzi shrinks into a pale shadow. He has become almost invisible, while the drums of Dr Borg’s unappealing right-wing conservatism get louder by the day. It is Dr Gonzi who should be speaking to the people about what’s happening with illegal migration, and not Dr Borg – because Dr Gonzi is equanimous but Dr Borg is a panic-monger who seems to have far more in common with Josie Muscat and Philip Beattie than Anglu Xuereb does.
Dr Gonzi’s sane approach to the issue of illegal immigration is being drowned out by the relentless sound of Tonio Borg flailing at progress and cultural change with his rosary beads.
I’d much rather listen to Dr Gonzi on this issue. Replying in parliament to a speech by the EU president, he said that Malta indisputably values life and the dignity of every person, and that there should be solidarity not only in the rescue of migrants in distress, but in giving them the opportunity to lead a dignified life. Human dignity, he reminded us, knows no frontiers, and Europe as a whole has the duty to provide a decent living for them. That includes us, the Maltese.
On the other hand, I can’t understand what the leader of the Opposition was on about when he “warned” that unless Malta receives effective EU assistance on illegal immigration, we will have to “start taking unilateral decisions”. Nobody bothered to ask him what those unilateral decisions might be, but this broadside is precisely in character. I’m more than little bit fed up of Dr Sant threatening, with his party quivering behind him, to behave badly if things don’t go as he wants them to. International obligations remain international obligations, and the law is the law.
Nor can I understand what possessed Emmanuel Micallef, the man we once hoped would replace Tony Zarb and make the General Workers Union a sensible organisation, when he wrote in a newspaper article: “Illegal immigration…is causing us frustration, perhaps not yet to the extent of justifying racism, but (because it is) an unbearable economic and social burden on our people and our future generations.” Justify racism? Racism can never be justified, Mr Micallef, no matter the pressure, and this isn’t pressure but the result of wild imaginations running on overdrive. Besides, I hate to point this out, but the real unbearable economic and social burdens on this country are the ones that the General Workers Union has protected and defended for decades: the 40 per cent of the workforce that are on the public payroll and paid by the taxes of the other 60 per cent, the Dry Docks, Malta Shipbuilding, overstaffing in corporations like Air Malta… shall I go on? What are a thousand immigrants, who are prepared to work, next to that burden that has been crippling the country for years, and bleeding it dry? And please, no more stupid comments: immigrants can never be a burden to the future generations of the country to which they emigrate, because those future generations will include their own working, tax-paying descendents. By helping to narrow the welfare gap, and by contributing to GDP, they are an asset and not a burden. The real burden is the Maltese parasites who get a cheque at the end of the month for producing nothing in the previous four weeks.
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