Santa Maria notebook
I’m glad to see that at least one police officer will be prosecuted for beating an African immigrant in Paceville earlier this summer. I do know that the police force took the accusations very seriously and rang all the eyewitnesses quoted in newspaper reports, asking them to go to police headquarters to give a written statement. These eyewitnesses weren’t treated or spoken to challengingly or in a hostile manner, but quite the opposite. The officer asking the questions appeared to have a genuine desire to find out what actually happened. This is not something we were able to take for granted in the not-so-distant past.
So now the question arises: how does this affect the prosecution of the man who was beaten? He was given a suspended sentence and fined for attacking the police, when it seems that the opposite was true and that the police attacked him. A reporter asked him about it, and he says that he just wants to put the whole thing behind him. He was raised in a country where people are conditioned to expect their human rights to be trampled upon. It’s sad to see that kind of behaviour here once more.
Let the prosecution of this police officer send a message to all those who posted comments beneath the on-line report of the beating, claiming that the African man got what he deserved for “resisting arrest”.
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Now four prison guards are going to be prosecuted, too, for the beating of a Dutch prisoner who tried to escape from custody last Saturday. He’s a drug trafficker serving a 15-year sentence. One of his arms and some of his ribs were broken. He claims that he was beaten when he was hauled back inside the prison.
The Dutchman had been granted an hour’s absence from prison to visit his mother – why couldn’t she have visited him in prison in the normal manner? – and had then tried to escape from the police van when it stopped outside the prison door. He raced to Paola Square and was dragged back, then claims he was hit around and locked in solitary confinement with his broken bones, only taken to hospital two days later.
Being Dutch, not African, and coming from a culture that is very much aware of civil rights, this man somehow communicated information about his condition to his family, who filed reports with various authorities. When he arrived at the hospital, he found an official from the Embassy of the Netherlands waiting for him, with the chairman of the prison board.
I trust that this beating will be taken as seriously as that other one. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a society where the violent abuse of the vulnerable by those in positions of authority is taken for granted as a fact of life, and where we adopt the po-faced attitude: “So what? He deserved it.” Much as I despise those who make their living by selling hard drugs, and the wives who live the high life off those earnings while parading around in society while their husbands are in jail, come si non fosse, I prefer to stick to civilised behaviour. The punishment meted out by the state in which we live is a prison sentence. It is not a prison sentence with ancillary beatings.
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I read with pleasure that the Labour MP Karl Chircop’s condition is slightly improved, though he remains in a coma. The other day, I skimmed through an interview with the mother of a 1980s British beauty queen, who ended up married to one of the wealthiest men in the world. “You never know how life is going to turn out,” she said. I sometimes think that way in moments of quietude, when I look back at all the people I grew up with, went clubbing with, sat for hours on the beach with, and thought we would all live for ever with. Rather too many of the familiar faces of those days have died already of cancer, of drug overdoses, in car accidents, leaving trauma in their wake. Sometimes a face comes suddenly to my mind, when I am thinking of something else entirely, and I can’t believe that I will never see that person again. I can’t believe how it all turned out.
Exactly 23 years ago, Karl Chirchop was a guest at my wedding, sitting in one of the front pews with my best friend, who he was dating at the time. I pulled out the photographs the other day, and saw a fresh-faced 20-year-old with his whole life ahead of him, who went on to become a doctor, to marry somebody else entirely, to have four children and enter politics – with a political party we were all busy opposing at the time. And now, this. We really never know how life is going to turn out, or if and when the trajectory will be brutally interrupted by tragedy and disaster. If we think of what might lie ahead, we will walk around with a cold, iron fist of dread and fear clenched permanently round our heart. It’s so much better to live in the moment.
When we complain and think that life is boring/dreadful/depressing, we only have to bear a single thing in mind: that when something truly terrible happens to sever us completely from the life we knew with the people we loved, we will look back with aching longing at the boring/dreadful/depressing life we had before the unhappiness began, and think only of how happy we were then. The parents of the boy who died at Ghadira will know exactly what I mean.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Midnight Express is 30 years old.
From what I am witnessing there is enough material for a sequel , this time here in Malta , instead of Turkey.
I went to Turkey exactly 3 years ago and customs there treated myself and a friend of mine as if we were drug couriers or something. The rest of the group (only 2 Maltese among a throng of 50 that included a strong contingent from Latin America) were okayed without problems.
Maybe the Turks still have it in for us because of the Great Siege?
A friend of mine who worked with the Turkish bank in Valletta told me that her Turkish colleagues denied this defeat…Ironical really since their Bank overlooks the Grand Harbour…
“Meerkat :) Sunday, 17 August 2125hrs
I went to Turkey exactly 3 years ago and customs there treated myself and a friend of mine as if we were drug couriers or something. The rest of the group (only 2 Maltese among a throng of 50 that included a strong contingent from Latin America) were okayed without problems.
Maybe the Turks still have it in for us because of the Great Siege?
A friend of mine who worked with the Turkish bank in Valletta told me that her Turkish colleagues denied this defeat…Ironical really since their Bank overlooks the Grand Harbour…”
Apparently their school books deny defeat at the hands of the Knights and Maltese in the Great seige of 1565. So much so that in some grand palace in Istambul there is a big garden with pavilions named after vanquished countries, and belive it or not, there seems to be a Malta pavilion as well.
The planned desecration of the offical grave of the heroic dead of the Great siege in the courtyard over-looking Mechants street as proposed by the St John’s foundation will no doubt be music in the ears for Turks residing in Malta.
[Moderator – Ho-hum. We’re still discussing a 500-year-old feud. And I thought Eastenders was bad.]
@ Moderator
You’re a gemgem party pooper :)
@ Meerkat & Sybil….all nations have written their histories with some “editing” here and there ;) Anyway the Ottoman Empire was one of Europe’s greatest powers & civilisations and we should respect them for that. If you wish to discuss the Siege, please keep in mind that one of the major factors which contributed to the Ottoman’s attack was the constant piracy/privateering by Maltese/Order’s ships on Ottoman vessels. The enslavement of Jews might also have contributued. Anyway, modern Turkey should serve as an inspiration to our law-makers when it comes to secularism (even if the Turks might be too strict on that one, but at least they are a secular country unlike….us)
Chris Borg, old chap, perhaps it would be wiser to take some Nordic EU country, or France, as an inspiration for secularism. Your attempt at anti-xenophobia has fallen flat.
Now, regarding the Ottoman Empire, I respect countries for what they are now, not for what they were 500 years ago. In any case, there was no such thing as “Turkey” in 1565.
Still, it’s true, Turks hate Malta – those who know about it, that is. As do North Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Arabs, Lebanese, most Europeans, Americans, you name it. We’re not exactly everyone’s favourite nation you know. Hell, even the Gozitans hate us.
@meerkat et al: “…customs there treated myself and a friend of mine as if we were drug couriers or something.” The number of drug couriers who originated their trip in Turkey and who were nabbed on arrival in Malta, point to an ongoing drug trading organisation. There would therefore have been some degree of justification of suspicion of travellers holding a Maltese passport, especially taking into account the number of fake Maltese passports that are also being traded around.
… and however ‘great’ the siege in 1565 might have been to the people of Malta – who have milked it for more than it was worth, it was no more than a blip in the history of the Ottoman Empire. Do people honestly believe that the Turks still have it in for us Maltese on this one?
[Moderator – That might be because all Maltese children are taught about the Great Siege but almost none of them are taught about the Ottoman Empire.]
Baxxter, ah it’s so bad everyone hates us :'(
Nordic EU countries? Such as Sweden? Hummmmmm those had a state religion up to 8 years ago (the Church of Sweden). Denmark and Finland still have a state religion and so do non-EU Norway and Iceland. Your attempt at idolising the Nordics / Nordic countries fell flat too….
There was no such thing as “Malta” in 1565 neither….
[Moderator – Yes, there was. And it’s ‘either’ not ‘neither’. Sorry to be such a nitpicker, but you’re my bete-noir: a smartass who knows next to nothing. Whether a country has a state religion or not makes no difference to the price of eggs. It’s whether that country separates church and state and is wholly secular in its legislation that counts. I don’t think you can fault Sweden, Denmark and Finland on that.]
@ moderator. up to a few years ago you had to pay a fine for leaving the Church of Sweden if you were Swedish-born…..
p.s. i think it’s neither…..either would be used in a positive sense but since in this case it’s being used in a negative sense (coupled with “not”) we use neither. anyway excuse my English as sometimes I get mixed up with dialect. anyway, let me keep that nice old word – whatever – roaming my head haha
[Moderator – Chris, what you “think” about English grammar and syntax is irrelevant. Grammar and syntax are not a matter of haphazard guesswork or of what you “think”. There are rules. Listen to me carefully: ‘not’ is used with ‘either’ NOT with ‘neither’, as in ‘I am not going EITHER’. ‘Neither’ is used with NOR, as in: ‘Neither Chris nor Alfred is going there.’ You can use EITHER of them without ‘not’ or ‘nor’, as in: ‘You can choose either one of them’, or ‘Neither of us is interested in what you’re saying.’ English is not a dialect. It’s a language. A fine for leaving the Church of Sweden – where did you get that? In 1952 a law was passed that allowed a Swedish citizen to withdraw formally from the state church and not be a member of any church. Different religions were accepted in Sweden after the Edict of Toleration of 1781, even though the Church of Sweden continued as the state church, with the king as its highest authority, into the late 20th century. In the 1990s, the Swedish Parliament approved a series of reforms aimed at promoting religious freedom, and in January 2000 the church ceased being financially supported by the state. In addition, Lutheranism stopped being the country’s official religion.]
Moderator: Small amendment if I may. The King has never been the head of the Swedish church, as far as I know. In the past he had to, by law, be a member, until this was changed in the late 90s.
Chris: There is actually monetary benefit to leave the church of Sweden, as you can opt out of paying a church tax nowadays (annoyingly this only happened as late as the year 2000). The tax paid can also be allocated to the religion of the taxpayers choice. As far as there being a fine to leave is beyond me. Perhaps an administrative fee, but none that I know of.
Dear Moderator: RE Baxxter
I think that in terms of what Baxter was trying to say with, quote “There was no such thing as “Malta” in 1565 neither….”
The simpler response would be that two negatives make a positive, therefore the quote “no such thing” and “neither”, Mr/Ms Baxxter do not fit in the same part of the sentence because they contradict one another . If however you were going to say eg: “There was no such thing as “Malta” in 1565, NEITHER was there a Gozo….”, than that would be grammatically correct. But clearly, it wasn’t what you were trying to say.
And moderator, there is in fact English dialect (although they don’t really call it as such), the Scottish speak and phrase their English differently to say the Australians, Americans and the Irish and wot not, however, you are correct in saying that written English has no dialect and the same rules of grammar apply globally when writing in the English language.