In 1963, people all over the world and especially in the US were asking themselves where were they and what were they doing when President Kennedy was killed.
I know where I was and what was I doing five years ago at around 3pm. I was on the terrace of SAMOC thanking God for some good news. There is but a short distance between Mater Dei and Bidnija but I can’t assert that I heard the explosion that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. The cars, buses and trucks passing by must have muffled the noise.
It was only when I got back to the office that we started getting reports of an explosion in Bidnija, later that a person had been killed and still later that this person was none other than Daphne, my mentor from the time I was still not employed by Standard Publications, then my steadfast colleague when I joined, my partner in numerous libel cases (especially those regarding Guide de Marco and Godfrey Grima), my friend through all these years.
As I have already written, I repaid that friendship: when in the last weeks things got very dire and she found herself completely isolated and she realised what was about to happen, I realized her total solitude and reached out in support. And she noticed this and thanked me. Those who today would wear her mantle were not around in those days.
She has now joined the innumerable list of martyrs who suffered because of what they had written. It was not enough to sue her for libel, not to confiscate all her money, nor to create a country-wide negative perception of her as The Witch from Bidnija. She had to be silenced forever, she had to be killed.
The martyrs of the Press are legion, especially in parts of the world where the rule of law is non-existent, like South America but also like Italy. But this was the first case in Malta, in a country that mistakenly believes it is a unique exception.
Since then, in these five years, her memory has been kept alive especially by a group of courageous followers who keep meeting and commemorating her every 16th of the month. Her memory is also being kept alive through the innumerable court cases regarding her assassination.
Her memory is now also being kept through the memorials to her that have sprung up – that in Valletta where schoolchildren appropriated the monument that commemorates the Great Siege and turned it into a shrine for Daphne, that has resisted all efforts by the government and its minions to shut it down, a shrine that has now been visited by none other than the President of Germany.
Other august visitors to Malta have passed by and did not even glance, such as Pope Francis himself.
(And meanwhile there was also the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, present at this high-level meeting but he does not seem to have found time to visit a Daphne shrine, when he knows what it means to have a family member killed by the Mafia.)
There is also a monument on the Sliema front, visited by the Prime Minister of Slovakia.
And there is the place where Daphne was killed which is visited by many, high and low, not just on a day like this but quietly every day.
Would it be possible to see the three highest persons in Malta, the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, even in a private capacity, visit the scene of the murder? And pray for peace and reconciliation?
Daphne was no saint and many people are still hurt by her barbs. But outside Malta the world sees and honours her indomitable courage and perhaps all Malta must at last acknowledge her fight against corruption.
Five years after that dastardly murder, Daphne, though dead has seen off a very popular prime minister and also a number of ministers who must have believed they were also Invictus. Five years after that murder, we find her place has been taken by a numbers of bloggers, opinion writers and the like who are making full use of the freedom she broke through by her blog.
Daphne’s life was not in vain, nor her death. Slowly, we must keep banging on the doors of truth and let it be free. That would be the greatest commemoration we could make.
[email protected]