Anti-war protesters clashed with the police yesterday when they tried to rush the cars carrying President Guido de Marco and Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami after a flower-laying ceremony at the Freedom Monument in Vittoriosa.
About 30 protesters from Moviment Graffitti, Azzjoni Pozittiva and Animal Group, among others, were outnumbered by uniformed and plainclothes policemen and women.
The protesters greeted the President and prime minister with catcalls as they neared Vittoriosa. On the way back, the protesters were standing by the side of the road and rushed towards the cars in order to try and get their message across, but were met by a barrier of policemen who held them back.
The ceremony and an afternoon regatta in Grand Harbour were yesterday the official activities organised by the National Festivities Committee to celebrate the 24th anniversary of Freedom Day, marking the end of the British military presence in Malta.
Festivities in Gozo were cancelled because of the bad weather.
The remembrance ceremony in Malta started at around 9 a.m. when the Armed Forces band and a guard of honour marched under a fine drizzle from Gavino Gulia Square, Cospicua to the Freedom Monument.
The Commander of the Armed Forces, Brigadier Rupert Montanaro, the prime minister and the President were saluted by the army as they arrived near the monument.
President de Marco inspected the guard of honour before proceeding up the rugged slope leading to the monument with Dr Fenech Adami.
The protest started near the memorial to the second world war dead, close to Gavino Gulia Square. Protesters then walked up the hill leading to Vittoriosa but were stopped from proceeding further when they got to the top.
There they honked air horns in a bid to disrupt the flower laying ceremony by the waterfront. The protesters were accompanied by a lone drummer while one of the group shouted slogans against war through a bull horn.
The demonstrators' message was that by allowing warships to make use of Malta's ports and by having warships repaired at Malta Drydocks, Malta was party to the war in Iraq.
The demonstrators called on the prime minister to state, "without beating about the bush", that Malta was against the war in Iraq.
A siren which reminded people of air raid warnings wailed, accompanied by the staccato beatings of a drum and the incessant beat of a wooden clapper.
The group unfurled a banner brandishing a slogan slamming the war as well as a number of placards, with one of them reading: 'The biggest terrorists live in the White House'.
A spokesman for the demonstrators, who preferred not to be named, said the police had repeatedly not allowed them to express their views on the war.
"We feel we have been censored," he argued.