KSU president refuses to read banned story

The president of the University Students' Council (KSU) does not want to read the story at the centre of a student newspaper ban on campus because "whatever I say makes no difference".

Law student Carl Grech, 20, believes this is a legal issue and it is up to the police and the courts to decide whether the publication of Realtà is illegal or not.

"This is not just an issue of freedom of speech. I'm sure if they find no legal problems the ban will be lifted," he said, adding KSU would not speak about the issue until it was decided in court.

Mark Camilleri, the editor of the publication and a 21-year-old history student, is facing a maximum of three months imprisonment and a fine because, if arraigned, he will be charged with obscene libel, defined as "injuring public morals or decency".

Mr Camilleri was interviewed by the police on Sunday when he was asked for his opinion about whether the article was obscene or not.

His small radical left-wing newspaper was removed from the University campus on the instructions of rector Juanito Camilleri who filed a police report after being alerted to the publication by the University chaplain.

The author of the contentious story, Alex Vella Gera, a 36-year-old novel writer based in Brussels, had said he was amazed by the extreme reaction to the story.

He chose to publish it at the University because he expected the readers would be mature and intelligent enough to get the message behind the story: the pathetic mentality of some men who see women as objects.

When contacted, the head of the Communications Department at the University, Fr Saviour Chircop, did not defend the publication.

He said the story was not literature because even controversial literature, like the book Lolita, dealt with much deeper human emotions, while this was just about a "cowboy" and its descriptions could be offensive, especially to parents of young daughters.

There were also legal implications to be considered and he feared the students involved in Realtà did not keep this in mind before publishing.

"I can't just go in the street and say anything I want. If we all do that there will be huge chaos," he said, adding it was not necessarily legal to offend, even though he admitted he was not particularly offended by the story.

He argued that even the BBC warned about explicit material because there was a concept of "good taste" that had to be given its due importance. He felt the story's message was too subtle unless it was simply intended to shock.

Fr Chircop also found no problem in the reaction of the police because the newspaper was published and distributed: "If I injure society, I have to deal with society. The author has offended the sentiments of the public. I have no problem with you challenging things but you have to do it with taste. Why do we need this kind of message?"

The head of the English Department, Ivan Callus was less judgmental and did not pronounce himself in favour or against the ban.

He said the absoluteness of the freedom of artistic expression would always be debated and might be conditioned by considerations involving audience and the vehicle of the message.

He made a distinction between the aesthetics of shock and the politics of shock: "The politics of shock is going to appear like tiresome theatre if the work in question is not supremely significant aesthetically."

He said what was perhaps most interesting about this debate was the "numbing predictability" of it all. He felt there was still a tendency in Malta to equate the aesthetics of shock with indulgence in the artistic transcription of vulgarity and in the representation of the sordid.

"My own view is the aesthetics of shock in 21st century literary (and other) art is more effective when prompted by experiments with form rather than indulgence in content," he said.

The Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM), the Journalists' Committee and the Malta Youth Press have come out against the ban.