Hunters' federation hits out at comments

The hunters' federation in a statement has criticized comments made by the president of BirdLife Malta and a comment carried in timesofmalta.com.

The FKNK noted that BirdLife's president, Joe Mangion in comments addressed at the FKNKstated: "Why is the FKNK administration so scared of peaceful, non-violent birdwatchers who are here to witness bird migration and report illegal activity? One would expect them to sit with us and report illegal activities too if they genuinely are against illegal hunting."

The federation said that, in the first instance these foreigners "with their interfering attitudes towards the Maltese and Maltese private property are not non-violent birdwatchers, but are here to play policemen on BirdLife's premeditated, provocative and confrontational plan, termed 'spring watch camp".

It said the qualifications requested from these intruders by BirdLife did not even call for anything about ornithology or bird recognition and this was nothing more than an organized man-hunt.

Secondly, the federation asked, had Mr Mangion conveniently overlooked his society's refusal to participate in the government-commissioned study which study they 'rubbished', and which "Joe Mangion's Turkish master and BirdLife's mercenary" ridiculed by saying that government 'should not expect birdies to go along happily hand in hand with the hunters to count birds'.

"Does now therefore Joe Mangion expect hunters to go along happily hand in hand with these foreign busybodies to fabricate further lies about counted birds!"

The federation also referred to a comment on this website by Louis Borg who wrote that "the only solution to stop illegal hunting is to deploy the army with shoot to kill orders at anyone in possession of a gun" which, the federation pointed out, was first carried and then removed.

"This also shows that as always 'The Times' (timesofmalta.com) is too quick when it comes to printing anti-hunting material, plus the fact that these words were printed even if only for a few minutes proves that there are people out there, possibly members of BirdLife (Malta) who are all out to provoke hunters," the federation said.

These comments, it said, were the best example of what constituted incitement to violence and hatred.