Is it relevant? Well, it’s part of the story, the same as someone’s age, gender etc. If this was in the context of a crime you can see how a media outlet might be trying to link crime to immigration but it is clearly not the case here.

Any suggestion of “send this immigrant back to his country” is entirely in the heads of paranoid readers and not in this actual news article.

Anyway, if this was about, let’s say a Somali immigrant in Malta, do you think the Maltese media just might mention his nationality? We’re not exactly that politically correct ourselves, are we?

Ghogobni l-kumment tiegħek. Qatt ma rajtha hekk, imma kif għidt int, ladarba titkebbeb fit-tapit la jagħfuk u lanqas titħammeġ!

The issue is not about a fetish but the fact that his nationality is specified by name. We have to put everything into perspective: Malta and the Maltese have, for the past months or so, negatively featured in the international press.

First it was the Dalligate-Bahamas affair, then the reaction to Malta’s push-back threat and the general racist reaction to Ms Malmstrom and the EU. This should be immediately obvious to anyone who has a wider perspective, as against the insular attitude, on the popular media abroad.

Fetish or not (or petty crime if you want), takes on greater significance by the fact that, in the present climate of international affairs, Malta and its people have become synonymous with some bad and negative publicity.

While I am entirely with you on the way Africans are being treated in this country, but the analogy portrayed has me lost completely. The chap has a fetish (don’t we all?), and he is playing it out for a profit. Good thinking.

What worries me is the publicity we get when real wrongdoers are in the news, such as the Maltese tourists in Italy. Take a look at the report L’Arena.it – Il Giornale di Verona:

http://www.larena.it/stories/Home/551695_furti_i_carabinieriarrestano_11_persone/?refresh_ce&scroll=2320

Notice how a comment on the same page describes us as a nation:

“i maltesi, quella brava gente che manco soccorre gli immigrati alla deriva in mare…”

Getting wrapped up in a carpet and being trodden on by young women in short skirts is really a just bit of harmless fun.

The gist of somethingwicked’s comment is that your point, though valid, could have done with a better – read relevant – illustration. The crime s/he alludes to is the “gang of Maltese thieves” rounded up somewhere in the north of Italy.

African batiks indeed.

[Daphne – dcgalizia@gmail.com]

[Daphne – No, we just notice it immediately because we’re Maltese.]