‘Malta expects help’

Malta had opened its doors to countries that needed help in evacuating its nationals from Libya but now expected help with the immigrants arriving on its shores, Labour Leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday.

“We opened our arms to other countries and told them that we would help. We did so without distinction but... we now expect others to help us,” Dr Muscat said in Vittoriosa at an event organised by the Labour Party to celebrate March 31, Freedom Day.

Referring to migrants fleeing the conflict in Libya who this week arrived in Malta, he said he expected other countries to act and not just talk of “solidarity”.

“Faced with the tragedies and illegal immigrants arriving on our shores, words alone of solidarity without facts to back them up are empty words.”

He pointed out that Malta was celebrating its freedom at a time when the Mediterranean was facing the “biggest upheaval in modern history”.

Over the years, the relevance of Freedom Day was questioned but the vision that led to Malta’s freedom 32 years ago saved the island and its people, setting it free, Dr Muscat said.

The country’s freedom and independence were intrinsically bound together. These “two foundations” on which the country was built were brought about by two “great visions” which have “kept us safe to this day.”

“The time for this vision is still not over – safety in Europe and the Mediterranean are one,” Dr Muscat said.

Malta’s mission was for peace in the Mediterranean which, however, was not an “easy one” because it went against the current. “But we will go against the current. We know that we are right – if not today then tomorrow,” he said.

Freedom turned Malta from a military base to a centre of peace. “Whoever says that Malta could ever serve as a military base is cut off from the country’s reality and we are here to renew the promise that it will never be a military base again.”

This decision was not taken out of “convenience” but because the country believed in the ideal of peace.

After his speech, Dr Muscat lit the flame and laid flowers by the Freedom Day monument, which recalls the closure of the British military base on March 31, 1979.