Murder by omission

Fact is stranger than fiction. I was indeed fascinated by the Decelis/Bowdler murder trial, and, now that it's all over, can comment about a particular kind of murder, which even you or I could, one day, be guilty of.

Murder by omission is basically not doing anything to help someone who is in danger of death. This can be done deliberately, it can be done out of fear, it can be done unconsciously too or out of sheer indifference.

When in India last September we had just left Pushkar and were climbing this winding road up to Ajmer when I spied a jeep that had gone off the road. Four bodies lay strewn about. I asked our driver to stop and phone the police but he refused and looking neither right nor left drove doggedly on despite my protests.

Apparently should we have done our civic duty and called the police we would have been kept in custody as suspects and/or witnesses till goodness knows when; unable to leave India. Drivers like our Suresh have strict instructions to override our protests and to drive on regardless.

The image of those four sprawled bodies haunts me to this very day. It was brought home to me with a vengeance while following the case of this poor young woman who, after a life of dogged misfortune, was left to die of a drug overdose by her boyfriend's family who did so with no apparent motive other than fear; fear of involvement with the police, fear of scandal or fear of whatever... while, I am sure, they never, till the last minute, imagined that Rachel Bowdler was going to die on them. Nobody actually does till it's too late, as death is something that only happens to "other people" till we come face to face with it.

I was listening to some people arguing about irregular immigration a few days ago and was shocked by the very cold-blooded conclusion that the AFM should not respond to the immigrants' distress calls. And let them drown, I asked. All I got was a shrug.

By playing the Three Wise Monkeys, can one eradicate the guilt of letting a couple of hundred men, women and children plunge to a watery grave? I doubt it. Just as I still am deeply troubled by what happened in Pushkar, how can anyone sleep at night knowing that somewhere out at sea, in the darkness, some leaky boat is carrying a crowd of desperate people who have paid P&O prices for a ride in a rusty tub leading to death by drowning, freedom, or, in the case of Malta, indefinite incarceration? Can the AFM, despite their growing antipathy to their job of playing nursemaid to the immigrants, ignore a distress call without a qualm? I doubt it.

Leaving the immigrants to their fate is a very draconian solution to a multi-faceted problem and one that, by rights, should not even be discussed let alone considered in Catholic Malta. Yet, there are people who listen to the Word of God every Sunday of their lives and who are unanimously described as pillars of the establishment who actually advocate this murder by omission! Nobody can cast the first stone; least of all you and me, for when you think of it, we can all be guilty of this new brand of crime that we were, before the Bowdler/Decelis case, blissfully unaware of.

This is why the irregular immigration problem is so complex and full of contradictions. On one hand we face a larger and larger influx of immigrants as the weather improves. Once they are in our territorial waters, which are, for political and economic reasons, inordinately large, we are in duty bound to bring them in or close an eye and let them sail on to Pozzallo if they can.

The Maltese population, by and large, does not want them. I have noticed that many programmes dealing with the problem avoid the "Negro" issue; notably Xarabank a couple of weeks ago where it seemed that only naturalised immigrants of Arabic origin were cited as examples of successful integration. Over the past 30 years many Arabs have settled in Malta and even married Maltese. Skin of a honey colour, olive colour and features altogether similar to our own Maltese stamp are widely accepted. However as soon as one even thinks of the Negroid features there's uproar and mayhem. Why?

The word iswed (black) in Malta terminology is widely associated with Tork (Turk); a completely mistaken assumption that we inherited off our forefathers who fought them, the Turks, not the Somalians, off. As we all know, the Turks are far from being black and are, for the most part, fairer than we are. But for some odd reason there is this long association with being Turkish and black which seems to be deeply embedded in the Maltese psyche and which, I am sure, fuels the racism that is rampant today.

It has nothing to do with religion either. Even when it is explained that the Somalis and Eritreans who, incidentally, are even further away from Turkey geographically than Malta, are Christian and not Muslim, the sentiments remain unaltered!

The recent vox pop on Xarabank, shocking and sometimes stomach-churning as it was, simply showed the age-old ignorance and xenophobia of the rank and file of Maltese and, more worrying still, the total inability of these people, whose religion is a mere cipher, to realise what their responsibilities and obligations as Christians are. Here I am afraid the Church has failed miserably.

If one had to gauge religious fervour and commitment by the enthusiasm engendered in the average village festa one would really be barking up the wrong tree as it is well known that the greater proportion of the aficionados are not actually regular churchgoers to start with. The macho who prepares the fireworks, the lavish decorations and plays the tuba in the village band is not necessarily that same man who goes to church every Sunday during the year, still less is he the one who understands that he must love his neighbour as himself!

Therefore, to the man who said that he'd prefer to kill his daughter rather than let her marry an iswed, by which we are to understand one of the Negroid race and not the Arab, I would ask what is it that makes this prospective son-in-law so repugnant in your eyes? What, apart from the colour of his skin, is it that terrifies you to the extent that this would be a fate worse than death? What has conditioned you into thinking the way you do? Do you associate your inbred racial discrimination and hatred with the religion you think you believe in and practise? I somehow doubt it.

kzt@onvol.net