The ante really has been upped in the search for the Mosta animal killer. Ever since the CCTV footage was broadcast by our web portal earlier this week, people have been giving every scrap of information possible to the police in a bid to find the person who has been killing dogs and cats and crucifying them in Mosta.

We are proud to say that our newsroom pushed and pushed until we got hold of the footage and we broadcast it on the internet. In a matter of minutes, the story and the video went viral and people from all around Malta were sharing it on the social networks. Everyone had the same message “share this video so we can catch the killer”.

But we have to ask the question; will it all be worth it in the end? Presuming this person is caught and hauled before the courts (as he deserves), the maximum he can get – per case – is one year’s imprisonment as permissible by law. A note here for the prosecution – if this person is caught, the clever thing to do would be to charge him on individual counts of animal cruelty, hence, he would be susceptible to a higher period of incarceration.

But even then, we seem to be missing the bigger picture. While many people are calling for capital punishment for this person, what they seem to be missing is that this person is seriously disturbed and probably mentally ill. What this person really needs is treatment and confinement, where he would not be able to carry out such acts, and even perhaps escalate to committing some serious act of violence against a human being.

And this brings us to yet another point. While the actions of this person deserve to be condemned, it is shocking to hear that while people have empathy for animals, they seem to lack it when it comes to other people.

This newspaper has long championed animal rights, but we also champion human rights. Just this week, we heard how a man – a father, a husband – was gunned down in his car. There was no public outcry there. We also heard how a Nigerian man died of cardiac arrest after being beaten up while in custody. Again, there was not much empathy there. So what is the message that Maltese society is giving then? We are basically saying that a dog and a cat’s life are more important than that of a black man and that of a man who came from a certain social background. Again, we stress that what the animal killer has done is despicable. But we really ought to sit down and have a long hard look and ponder about our values. At the end of the day, we are all creatures of this earth. Many say that we are all equal, and that we are all, at the end of the day, living and breathing organisms. But at what point did we lose our compassion for fellow human beings?