Each summer we seem to get a new polemic usually to do with the festa season.

This year, not for the first time, attention has been focused on the plight of some animals whose pens were very near to the place where the St Sebastian fireworks are let off.

It was heart-rending to read about the panic and the fear that the fireworks engendered in the poor animals.

People who read about this in the media commented that once again Malta does not seem to be an animal-friendly country at all, despite all shows of a country that loves animals.

But what about the migrants, shut up in the closed centres of Hal Far and the bombardment last weekend from the Zurrieq festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel?

These poor migrants, who were saved from the sea, came, many of them from war zones. The noise of petards (and some of the Zurrieq petards were very loud, especially the Sunday evening ones) must have reminded the migrants of the sounds of war, the war they thought they had escaped.

Imagine having children woken up by these big bangs.

It was Zurrieq but it can easily be Birzebbuga and its festa in the coming days. Or one of the surrounding villages whjich will celebrate the Assunta in the coming weeks.

We are not sensitive to the plight of animals; why should we be sensitive to the plight of humans?

There is nothing so Maltese as the annual festa and petards constitute an essential part of the festa – or at least so we think. But we think nothing of letting off petards and causing pain, discomfort and fear in children in our homes,  the elderly, the sick and maybe too ordinary people who cannot take all that noise. Why should we make an exception for migrants?

And, again, we, or at any rate many of us, love animals and surround ourselves with them and pamper them and play with them. But still one hears and reads of cases of cruelty to animals even of cases of unintentional cruelty.

One would think we would not be cruel with migrants who our armed forces plucked from a watery grave. But we still can be cruel, even if unintentionally.

One is not arguing here for doing away with festas, not even with petards. But at least one pleads for moderation, for considering the situation of others, those who may be scared stiff by the petards, mistaking them for bombs from the wars they have escaped from.