Last week’s shooting of a protected bird and the events that followed were highly unfunny, on at least three counts. First, because a kestrel ended up severely injured, and suffering. Even if our eating and other habits cause untold suffering to animals generally, I don’t think the particular should be devalued.

Second, because a young man ended up in prison, and imprisonment comes at tremendous individual and social costs.

At 24, I was trying to set myself up in some kind of career. A year in prison and a fine of €5,000 would likely have broken me. As it happened, my acts of bravado at the time did not include shooting at kestrels.

Funny that in a time that is so given to displays of compassion and second chances and such, we should think nothing of sending a young man to prison for what was essentially bravado. I am guessing Kirsten Mifsud has not much by way of background and social capital to fall back on. Prison tends to be especially damaging in the long term to people like him.

The circumstances of how he got there are intriguing. The kestrel had barely touched the ground when the tweet came from Azerbaijan (because, what do you know, a poaching incident requires an immediate prime ministerial dispatch from the other side of the world) that, “despite sharp decline in illegalities”, the decision was that the hunting season would be closed.

Let us leave aside the bizarre logic of that. Successful conservation depends in large measure on legislation and enforcement protocols that respect individual decision-making. A hunter needs to know that, as long as he abides by the rules, he will be able to hunt. The Azerbaijan tweet was a slap in the face of that simple and basic action-consequence mechanism.

What Magistrate Francesco Depasquale said in court was astonishing, to put it mildly. As reported in Times of Malta (the judgment is not available online yet), he told Mifsud that “as a result of his actions, the hunting season was closed early, to the detriment of hunters who obeyed the law”.

With respect to Depasquale, the season was not closed as a result of Mifsud’s actions. If anything it was also closed as a result of the actions of the hunters who shot a cuckoo and a lapwing earlier in the season, possibly also as a result of a longer-term legacy of poaching.

The tangle of tort, if we must invoke that legal term, would be mind-boggling.

Imprisonment comes at tremendous individual and social costs

The hunting season was closed as a result of a patronising and frankly fascist politics of collective punishment. In other words, Depasquale was happy to accept that Mifsud’s offence was aggravated by the wrong decisions of others.

The reason why the charade was so damaging to conservation and sustainable hunting is that Mifsud, who after all shot a protected bird, went to prison with all the trappings of a victim. The choreography of events did little to help matters.

Mifsud was hauled to court in the manner of the worst criminals. I had to pinch myself when I saw the convoy of police cars sweep into Strait Street towards the back entrance of the building.

For a second I thought the case involved the cold-blooded murder of a much-loved philanthropist known as ‘il-kestrel’.

The choreography of criminalisation did not stop there. Mifsud was arraigned in handcuffs. The press fell over each other to show us pictures of his tattoos. And, predictably, he became ‘il-Benghazi’ – because criminals sound more criminal when they are referred to by their nicknames. Truly a case of journalism at its most docile and accommodating, shall we say.

The third reason why last week’s events were so outrageous is that they brought out the worst in so many. Take hunters themselves. The point has been made that Mifsud’s conviction was an example of the demonisation of hunters by a bunch of insufferable fundamentalists.

That, however, is too simple. I came across many hunters who said they thought that a one-year sentence was justified, and that the law should continue to be draconian with ‘criminals’ (there we go again) who spoiled everyone else’s fun. Thing is, I doubt there are a dozen hunters in the whole of Malta who have never shot a protected bird.

This applies especially to the kind of 50+ hunter who is most inclined to pontificate about Mifsud’s evil.

They will have shot anything in the 1980s and 1990s, when hunting was a free-for-all affair. Only most of the species that are protected now were protected then. So should all hunters be in prison?

Of course not. My point is that the current madness causes otherwise-sane people to get all sanctimonious and hypocritical. The malady is not limited to hunters.

I’m convinced that what clinched the Prime Minister’s decision was the venue.

The sanctimonious hunters’ unlikely bedfellow is a mob made up of socioeconomic types A-C1.

I have this vision that will not go away of people sipping tea in front of the guillotine.

Which means that St Edward’s was the perfect setting for Joseph Muscat’s little bit of theatre. Except for the long line of SUVs parked outside St Edward’s twice a day, that is, which does put a bit of a dent in the environmental credentials of that circle. I’d say the pupils have more than an injured kestrel to be traumatised about.

What’s in a tweet? On this occasion, a dog’s dinner of bizarre judgments, political posturing, hypocrisy, and conservation setbacks. When in Azerbaijan, do as the Azeris do.

mafalzon@hotmail.com