Of fear, hatred and bullies

Suleiman Ismail Abubaker died in hospital on June 10 as a result of injuries sustained in an incident in Paceville. A bouncer has now been charged with inflicting on him serious injuries followed by death. It appears that passers-by kicked Mr Abubaker while he was nearly out of his senses lying on the ground. Given the circumstances known so far it can safely be said that the first death related to racism has happened in Malta to the very same man who a year ago had been beaten in the very same place. Who says that lightening does not strike in the same place twice?

Mr Abubaker is a victim of our failed system. He died because after practically 2,000 years of Christianity, sadly, our beliefs are no more than skin-deep. He died in a wave of hatred, alone and unloved, taking upon himself the pent-up frustrations and fears of the Maltese race with every blow. It is shocking but, alas, hardly surprising.

Till now I have not read any official condemnation anywhere; neither from the Church nor from the state. Moviment Graffiti held a walk last Saturday, however, I have the feeling that, by and large, we are treating this as a non-event. Out of sight out of mind. We have the evidence before us in the result of the European Parliament elections. The government lost votes because it was accused of not doing enough to solve the illegal immigrant problem while, as a proof of it, Norman Lowell increased his support from his previous attempt to cadge an EU parliamentary seat. Irrational hatred is still rampant.

Interestingly, The Times on Friday carried the news that, after a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Italy, Libya and Malta in Rome a week ago, the problem will be treated at source, namely on Libyan soil. What was extraordinary, however, was not this groundbreaking news but that, since Muammar Gaddafi's visit to Italy, his first since 1977, the flotillas of boats carrying immigrants dried up altogether despite the good weather. In other words, Ministers Franco Frattini and Carm Mifsud Bonnici have come to the obvious conclusion that this exodus has been controlled exclusively by Libya and have somehow pulled off a hat-trick!

Maybe this had something to do with the most extraordinary agreement I have yet to read about between Silvio Berlusconi and the Colonel; namely that Italy pledged the sum of €3.5 billion over the next 25 years in compensation for Libya having been its colony from 1911 to 1947.

I quickly unearthed my mother's ancient solar-powered calculator and worked it out. Should Great Britain pay us a similar sum for the 164 years of colonisation, Gordon Brown would have to pay out €15.94 billion to us over 25 years, which is one way of solving Tonio Fenech's deficit problems. Going back to Libya and Italy I had a niggling suspicion that there was dirty work afoot when the Cavaliere presented the Colonel with the headless torso of the Venus some months ago. When Nicolas Sarkozy and even Tony Blair were photographed smiling like Cheshire Cats with the beaming Colonel, I became even more suspicious. Then came Italy's bully-boy tactics with tiny Malta with Roberto Maroni declaring that Malta should have had 40,000 more immigrants than it had by right according to international law.

Although at the time I had somehow seen this as a thinly-veiled excuse to gazump Malta's inherited territorial waters I am not at all convinced that our problems are over. I am not at all happy about immigrants being screened in Libya and still less about those being kept in captivity. As we got no support from the EU at the time, I would still prefer joining Nato rather than fall between two stools. Libya and Italy would have no qualms in sacrificing us if their national interest was at stake and, you tell me, where would our much-vaunted neutrality be then? Up the waterspout no doubt!

Has Mr Abubaker died in vain? That remains to be seen. We are talking about the death of a human being. As Shylock declaimed in The Merchant of Venice about the Jews who were at the time considered to be little more than vermin: "If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?" There is no limit to the awful things we human beings are capable of doing to each other. I heard that in England the Holocaust has been expunged from school history books not to offend the Muslim community, which like the Extreme Right are in denial.

Mr Abubaker died a scapegoat to our frustration, a victim to forces much larger than he ever imagined and prejudices going back hundreds of years. His death marks the beginning of a tragedy that will leave an indelible stain on the 21st century like the Holocaust stained the 20th and, no matter how much Europe tries to wash it off, it will never go away.

kzt@onvol.net