In true Kafkaesque fashion, the government started celebrating today’s International Human Rights Day, as well as yesterday’s International Anti-Corruption Day, by attacking the bereaved family of assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and by accusing them of ‘contempt against the state’.

This because they had the audacity to have gone to a leading British law firm for legal advice on the investigation into the assassination, a firm that specialises in the European Convention of Human Rights. And to top it all off, they went and published that legal advice in full, acts, the government said yesterday, that constitute an attempt ‘to undermine the authority of Maltese institutions’ and an attack against the government and state.

To quote the government directly: ‘It is clear that the so-called ‘Urgent Advice’ is nothing but more of the same one-sided, uninformed and speculative attacks on a democratically elected government and on the Maltese state for reasons known to whoever commissioned it.’ 

The government knows very well who commissioned the ‘Urgent Advice’ from the British law firm, it is written in plain English in the advice itself, which the government has clearly read.

The government appears to need to be reminded that it is a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, and the family’s right to invoke the ECHR’s articles is a right guaranteed to them at law. Contrary to the government’s argument, alleging a breach of human rights by a state that has signed the European Convention of Human Rights is a right protected at law.

The government’s reaction smacks of totalitarianism, it labels citizens who defend their rights as enemies of the state, and international lawyers specialised in human rights as, it is inferred in not so many words, interfering foreigners.

The government has an absolute obligation to defend individuals’ rights. Those individuals should not have to ask for their rights to be defended, let alone go abroad for advice on how they should be defended.

Anyway, let’s face it – where else are the family meant to turn when they see the powers that be in their own country failing them and the investigations into the assassination?

It is abundantly clear that no law firm in Malta is cut out for the job. That is not because they are incapable but, rather, because of the political sensitivity of the case. No Labour Party-leaning Maltese law firm would touch such a case with a ten-foot pole, and any Nationalist-leaning firm would be immediately accused of political polarity.

This particular case has so many political nuances that anything the government does means walking through a virtual minefield. When the Home Affairs Minister recently published a letter from the family asking him to cease and desist from making public information on the investigation that the minister should arguably not have access to, he walked into one such minefield and he should have known better.

Many are labouring under the erroneous presumption that because Daphne Caruana Galizia made the business of public figures’ lives her business, her tragic death and her family’s privacy are fair game. They are not.

Her family is not to be made synonymous with Daphne’s pen. What Daphne did, Daphne did – not her family, and their wishes and rights are to be respected. 

What her family is seeking is a truly independent investigation into her assassination considering the fact that the very people that were the subject of her pen are some of the same people who are investigating her murder.

For the government to take such umbrage at them for having sought legal advice as concerns the ECHR is not only pathetic, it is deeply troubling. This attitude being demonstrated by the government is most unbecoming of people who hold public office and who, as such, should know better.