The Cyrus Engerer case: where are Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Deborah Schembri and their Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance now?
I have just sent a message to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who set up the Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance last August and leads it with Labour MP Deborah Schembri:
Good morning. As leader of the Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance, are you planning to release a statement welcoming the Court of Appeal’s ruling in the Cyrus Engerer case?
So far, there has been no reply. Perhaps the Earl Grey hasn’t taken hold yet. But I suggest that some newspaper or media house should pursue this matter with roughly the same question. Pullicino Orlando might well choose not to reply to me but he can ill afford to refuse to reply to The Malta Independent or Times of Malta.
It’s worth pointing out that Pullicino Orlando set up that ‘alliance’ a few days after he was photographed in awkward circumstances at a Rabat bar at 5am with a woman who was not his wife (following which he became involved in a drunken brawl) and the photographs were published on this website.
Times of Malta, however, took him seriously and failed to put his setting up of this ‘organisation’ into its proper context. On 13 August (the Rabat bar incident was on 3 August), the newspaper reported:
A group of individuals have set up the Anti-Cyber Harassment Alliance (Malta) to raise awareness about and encourage legislation against cyber harassment and cyber stalking.
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, the organisation’s contact person, said MPs needed to address this issue by the enactment of a law making cyber stalking and cyber harassment a criminal offence. A conviction should result in a restraining order, probation, or even criminal penalties against the assailant, including jail.”
Now that somebody has finally been jailed for what is actually cyber harassment, and it happens to be their fellow Labour protaganist Cyrus Engerer, Deborah Schembri and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando of the Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance are silent. As they say, way to go.
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Super!!
Deborah Schembri of the Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance was right behind Joseph Muscat applauding Cyrus yesterday evening.
That shows what a hypocrite she is. Maybe one should ask her whether she condones what Cyrus did, to emulate her Leader, who stated that he has the same values as his.
He’s busy posting happy mother’s day wishes to his Facebook friends at the moment, poor chap.
http://www.change.org/petitions/house-of-representatives-malta-enact-a-law-making-cyberstalking-and-cyberharassment-a-criminal-offence
I suspect this Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance was set up by Pullcinel Orlando ONLY to shut YOU up Daphne. No one can beat you, keep it up.
Two weights and two measures.
The Prime Minister in his capacity as the new messiah has publicly absolved Cyrus Engerer from any form of transgression by baptising him at a public meeting.
JPO knows which side his bread is buttered and is unlikely to bite the hand that feeds him.
It proves that their cause was never genuine, as usual.
I am also interested in what Gabi Calleja and the Malta Gay Rights Movement have to say about the Cyrus Engerer judgement.
Was this also a hate crime?
Where are the journalists.
Here is some interesting reading: the Tyler Clementi case.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/30/tyler-clementi-gay-student-suicide
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/apr/25/gay-rights-new-jersey
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/tyler_clementi/index.html
I agree with Ciccio; Gabi Calleja should be making a statement to the press in view of the precedent that Cyrus Engerer’s case sets with regards to homophobic hate crime.
Class!
The Anti-Cyberharassment Alliance Action Committee is composed of:
– Joseph Cuschieri: Head of PL delegation to the European Parliament
– Deborah Schembri: Member of Parliament, Chairperson of the Social Affairs Committee and family lawyer
– Charlie Azzopardi: Family psychotherapist
– Silvio DeBono : Chairman, Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) and University lecturer
– Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando: Executive Chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST)
– Jesmond Mugliett: former Minister and member of parliament
– Keith Cutajar: Teacher in a private school – Bachelor of Science graduate in IT reading for a Masters in IT Security
(which focuses on Cybercrime and Digital Forensics )
‘The alliance aims at encouraging the country’s elected representatives to address cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking through the strengthening and rationalising of existing legislation in order to ensure that these forms of aggression are looked upon as criminal offences.’
Cyrus Engerer’s crime carried a 2-year prison sentence suspended for 2 years. Now what?
If Silvio’s Debono is chairman of MCAST, I can see now hoe the MLP are allowed to campaign and put up posters inside the campus of MCAST.
On the subject of Charlie Azzopardi, what a coincidence that there is a further link then between the author, the illustrator, Joseph Muscat and this question.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/37195545?versionId=48315910
What a small world.
Well, on some level their silence is understandable. Cyrus has the backing of the PM, so now any criticism of Cyrus will be perceived as an attack on the PM and the Labour Party, and is against the national interest, etc etc.
And we all know the repercussions of any attack on the Labour Party (the phrase “hitting below the belt” comes to mind.)
My thoughts exactly. The Oracle has spoken and let nobody dares oppose him. And so say all of us tal-lejber
Amen to this.
http://markanthonysammut.blogspot.fr/2014/05/a-revengeful-of-steel-elevated-to-by.html?m=1
The judgement actually means that their campaign was useless as legislation against cyber harassment and cyber stalking were already in place. In Maltese, we have good saying: hanqa ta’ hmar.
They have all been unmasked. No sympathy at all for their hero’s victim. They are a despicable lot.
I never expected anything better from PL and Joseph Muscat in particular, given his upbringing, being fed Mintoffian drivel by his grandma from an early age. They are not victims or underdogs.
They have always been the perpetrators of injustices, violence, human rights violations. Hadn’t he threatened Norman Vella to hit him below the belt where it hurts.
Is there no decent Labour MP left who will disassociate herself or himself from this shameful episode? Labour never gave anything to anyone because they care, but only if they could gain votes for themselves.
Shame also on the LGBT group which has not come forward in sympathy with the victim at the hands of a rogue activist.
The other question to ask would be what he thinks of the PN’s latest constitutional presented to the speaker of the house yesterday.
One which defines and seals digital rights; the right to access the internet freely, the right to obtain information online and the right to hold, divulge and discuss matters freely on the net.
Let’s see what the term cyberbullying really corresponds to in his mind.
The people out there know that the Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance was formed to try and shut up your blog, Daphne. It will definitely not issue any statement about Cyrus Engerer.
What I can’t understand is, how come that if a person is found guilty of a criminal act, he/she loses his/her job while Cyrus
Engerer is going to keep his?. Can someone enlighten me please?.
Times of Malta regularly fail to put a story into context and make obvious and logical links between stories.
Recently, they have been running a series of articles against the use of slurry as fertiliser yet when they reported about the idea of dissolving corpses and using the resulting liquid as fertiliser, they reported it as if this were perfectly normal.
Where’s the consistency?