Apology due to wartime internees’ descendants

I agree with Giacomo Spina (The Sunday Times, March 25) that an official apology to the descendants of the Maltese wartime internees is long overdue.

Seventy years have passed since the shameful and illegal deportation of the 43 so-called Maltese ‘Italo­philes’, to Uganda.

A debate on the internees was held in the Council of Government on February 9, 1942, and Sir Ugo Mifsud, one of the co-founders of the Nationalist Party, delivered one of the most stirring speeches ever given in a Maltese parliament.

Sir Ugo himself was so overcome by the seriousness of the situation that he suffered a heart attack half-way through his speech.

In his speech, Sir Ugo asked how the Maltese members of the Council of Government could be expected to approve a law to exile fellow Maltese when Britain, despite the war, had itself not enacted such a law to exile Britons.

“What has happened to the internees can happen to anyone. We are here to defend individual human rights,” Sir Ugo said.

“I pray to God that such ugly matters which will leave an indelible mark on our history will not happen in Malta... I am feeling ill,” Sir Ugo said. He then suffered a heart attack and was taken home, dying two days later.

Upon arrival in Uganda the internees were told they had actually won their court appeal, yet they were not brought back, not until March 7, 1945, even though by that time Italy had been out of the war for 18 months!

Many of the internees contracted malaria while in Uganda, but thankfully, they all made it back to Malta.

After their return, they and their families continued to suffer prejudice.

Ironically, one of the deportees, my great uncle, the former Captain Alfred Bencini, had seen active service in the British Army during World War I.

As Mr Spina writes, thousands of Americans of Japanese descent were interned during that war. However, the US government had the humility to apologise to them.

Ten years ago, Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg had recalled the deportation of the Maltese internees, describing it as a gross injustice and one of the most shameful episodes of Malta’s history.

Speaking in Parliament, Dr Borg said the deportation the Maltese had been a gross injustice by the British government, and those people and their families suffered its consequences long after the war ended.

Dr Borg said it was unfortunate that the people tended to forget their history.

Seventy years on, the injustice suffered by a group of Maltese who were punished when they had committed no wrong, has not been officially commemorated!