Government targets events commemorating Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination

While various events, both locally and abroad, are underway in the lead-up to the five-year anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, the governing party’s propagandists have been busy targeting some of these events presumably to deter people from participating.

On 16 October Archbishop Charles Scicluna will celebrate mass, a silent gathering will be held at the site of the explosion in Bidnija, and a demonstration calling for justice will take place in Republic Street, Valletta in the evening. A vigil for justice will follow at Great Siege Square with Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament expected to attend.

Meanwhile, the only scheduled event for Prime Minister Robert Abela on 16 October is a political party event that will be held at the Labour Party’s Zebbug club and while the German and the Slovak heads of state paid tribute to the journalist, Labour Party mouthpieces set their sights on two events being organised to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

These include the seminar being organised by NGO Repubblika in collaboration with the Fondazione Giovanni Falcone and the activity for youths at St Paul’s Missionary College, an event that several schools were invited to attend.

Propagandist Emanuel Cuschieri, who now broadcasts his messages to Labour followers on his Facebook page, took issue with Repubblika for organising a seminar with the Fondazione Giovanni Falcone.  In Cuschieiri’s view, discussing the challenges faced by Malta’s public institutions is akin to the political persecution of the Labour Party.

The event for youths has since been postponed but not before propagandist Karl Stagno Navarra used his programme on the Labour Party’s TV station to display the letter sent to parents by the headmaster of St Paul’s Missionary College asking them for their informed consent concerning their child being filmed or photographed during the event. Other propaganda outlets went on to publish the names of other heads of schools.

Even during the days leading up to the vigil that will commemorate the fifth anniversary marking the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the partisan propaganda that played such a crucial role in her vilification and isolation is still very much in place. It takes slightly different forms and targets different people, but it is very present, and it now operates under the patronage of Robert Abela instead of Joseph Muscat.

When the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry report was published in July last year, Abela wrote that “the report merits mature analysis beyond partisan arguments. Lessons must be drawn, and the reforms must continue with greater resolve.”

Instead, everything remained the same. Abela never committed to a plan or a timeline to implement the inquiry’s recommendations and refused to take up the offer for technical assistance offered to him by several press freedom organisations to help the government with the implementation process. He then shot down the Opposition’s legislative proposals in parliament which were based on the public inquiry’s recommendations, only to hastily set up a media experts committee that was to comment on shoddy draft legislations.  Calls to open the legislation up to public debate are being ignored and critical voices continue to be targeted.

At the same time, government authorities are going to unprecedented lengths to stop access to information that is in the public interest, a situation that the international campaign director for Reporters Without Borders, Rebecca Vincent described as, “absurd” and that “the climate for freedom of information in Malta has deteriorated”.

All of this, and more, is bolstered by coordinated propaganda campaigns that are set in motion every time the government perceives a threat, whether it’s prominent voices fighting for the basic right to freedom of expression, individuals or organisations demanding answers and accountability or simply an event to commemorate the death of a journalist.