Hundreds attend mass and vigil in Valletta to remember Daphne Caruana Galizia

Hundreds of people attended a mass and vigil in Valletta marking six months since the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The events in Malta were organised by Civil Society Network, Occupy Justice, il-Kenniesa and Awturi.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna told a packed St Francis Church that justice is a fundamental and radical need and “life without justice is undignified”.

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Warning that it was easy to get “tangled in the nets of corruption,” Scicluna said that although the search for justice might mean hardship, this should not lead to mediocrity.

Quoting Pope Francis, he said some people had, in their search for justice, fallen under the power of those who would seek to extinguish freedom of expression.

As mass ended, The Shift News journalist Caroline Muscat held a short speech on indifference citing Elie Wiesel’s ‘The Perils of Indifference’.

The crowd was then joined by others walking down Republic Street. They filled the square of the Great Siege monument in front of the law courts, which has been turned into a memorial for the murdered journalist.

Many were holding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s black and white portrait and placards asking ‘Who killed Daphne?’

The crowd was addressed by a number of speakers including Pauline Ades-Mevel, the Head of Europe and New Media desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

She said that six months after Caruana Galizia’s murder, Malta “is still the world capital of journalism.”

To great applause, she said people gathered in Valletta and in other cities around the world to “show the Maltese authorities and the international community that we will not forget Daphne,” adding that “we will not rest until all of those who planned and carried out the attack are brought to justice”.

Ades-Mevel said that “the killers wanted to silence Daphne but we have evidence that they did not manage, they wanted to silence us but they did not manage. They did not get more than one minute of silence from us.”

Paraphrasing Caruana Galizia’s now famous last words, Ades-Mevel said “It’s not the crooks who are everywhere, we are everywhere”.