This is the text of remarks delivered by Sylvana Debono, President of the Istitut tal-Ġurnalisti Maltin this morning at the Daphne Caruana Galizia protest memorial in Great Siege Square, Valletta. In 2020 Reporters without Borders ranked Malta in the 81st place in press freedom ranking. This marks a whopping 36-point fall from grace in 7 [...]
“Not the behaviour of a civilised country.” Avvenire journalist Nello Scavo described the scene outside the court building this morning with these words. A bunch of thugs, besmirching the Maltese flag merely by holding it, waited for him to step out of the court building after testifying in the case filed by the police against [...]
The SOFA (state of forces agreement) situation requires some analysis. First, what is it? Until the government publishes a document signed with the United States and then presents it to parliament for ratification, we cannot be entirely sure. At this point we can judge by what we know the United States has asked from Malta [...]
A friend of mine found a fossilised shark tooth whilst snorkelling off Għar Qawqla. He usually looks around for things he can put in a stew, but the size and shape of the object he came across one summer morning struck him. Since he found the giant tooth in Gozo, he thought the museums department [...]
Daphne Caruana Galizia used to be resigned she’d be accused of having unleashed yet another attakk faħxi u moqżież fuq it-tfal tal-prim ministru Joseph Muscat. I write this with more than a little expectation of something of the sort. Robert Abela’s daughter’s first day of school has been paraded as some sort of PR exercise [...]
I won’t go into unnecessary details here because relatives and friends have suffered enough and because without appreciation of the specific circumstances of the story, one risks reaching uninformed conclusions. But I’m aware of reports of a former prison inmate who lost his life to a drug overdose this week, soon after his release from [...]
Malta Today reported yesterday that the US defence secretary is visiting Malta to push for a ‘status of forces agreement’, known as SOFA, with the Maltese government. This has come up in the past. The United States gets squeamish at the sight of any of its uniformed officers in the dock of the justice system [...]
Robert Abela didn’t appreciate Jacob Borg asking him questions about Joseph Muscat. His first answer was that there should be no further consequences to revelations about his conduct as prime minister. He’s already resigned, so he “paid the price” for whatever. It’s funny how people in high office are tempted to think their jobs belong [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Where I live, I have noticed children working on farms helping their parents during school hours like this was 1920. I am aware of children living in families that may afford a computer but it’s mostly used by parents for Facebook scrolling. There is no doubt [...]
Dutch TV journalist Siebe Sietsma and editor Luuk Mulder this weekend won the Netherlands’ top award for investigative journalism for an investigation into the sale of Maltese passports. The Loep is the most prestigious award given to investigative journalists in the Netherlands. Het onderzoek van Nieuwsuur naar de paspoorthandel vanuit Malta heeft vandaag een Loep [...]
At the yearly journalism festival, the town of Ronchi dei Legionari remembered Daphne Caruana Galizia with a portrait composed of photos of journalists who like her were killed in the line of duty. In a Facebook post, Fabian Pacella, who last night was awarded a yearly prize for courage in journalism by the press freedom [...]
The Italian press freedom organisation Leali delle Notizie has awarded the third Daphne Caruana Galizia memorial award to Fabiana Pacella, a journalist from Apulia who has worked for 20 years on investigations into the Sacra Corona Unita, the local mafia organisation that has infiltrated local politics and business. Fabiana Pacella, who works as a freelance [...]
Joseph Muscat let rip into US-based financial crime blogger Kenneth Rijock today calling him a “fraudster” after the American was a bit more specific on the cross-border investigations he had been saying were being conducted into the former prime minister’s affairs. Kenneth Rijock reported the Italians were investigating Joseph Muscat. Joseph Muscat said they weren’t. [...]
It has been my privilege to help tell the story of what happened here in Malta when Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed and all that happened since then, a number of times. I met some great journalists it was an honour just being close to, let alone to have answers to their questions. Richard Engel [...]
After all that’s been said and done, the statement by the Gasan family today (scroll down for a full copy) feigns surprise at the corruption behind the Electrogas contract and the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia that sought to cover that corruption up. Some choice quotes from their statement: “We declare that if there is [...]
Our knight in shining armour, the muslim ronin, defender of our shores, guarantor of fitting spectacles, missionary for guerrilla warlords and hero for our time will not be able to meet Keith Schembri to discuss football for a while. It must be so hard to be a mid-level schoolyard bully finding oneself abandoned by all [...]
Keith Schembri’s lawyers Edward Gatt and Mark Vassallo filed an application in the magistrate’s court this morning saying their client has been under arrest since the wee hours of this morning and he hasn’t yet been given a copy of the evidence against him or been allowed to speak to his lawyers yet. That must [...]
At the Independence Day mass yesterday, Prime Minister Robert Abela had everyone cover their nose and mouth. He didn't personally put masks on people. But his government, the one he's the chief executive of, is telling us that whenever we're in the same room with people we don't live with day and night, we must [...]
The official government mouthpieces report the mounting death toll of the coronavirus epidemic in old people's homes with the plain ordinariness of cheap vanilla. We are told the dead were in their 70s, 80s or 90s suggesting that their lease was about to expire in any case. And a medical convenience has been coined reporting [...]
Of course, there’s no gratitude here for our institutions to have apparently risen out of their slumber and froze Keith Schembri’s accounts now when they should have done that four years ago. But we need to recognise, we have to recognise, that things have come much further than Keith Schembri ever imagined they would even [...]