On July 8, Minister of Culture Owen Bonnici announced a reform of our censorship laws. The reform has to be viewed in its proper context.
In the years 2009-2011 there was a spike in acts of censorship by the State, the most famous being the ban of the play Stitching by the theatre censorship board and the criminal prosecution of Ir-Realta’ editor Mark Camilleri and author Alex Vella Gera for the publication of the short story Li Tkisser Sewwi.
Censorship was far from limited to these two cases, but these captured the public imagination for the simple fact that the persons involved resolved not to be intimidated and instead fought back against these repressive laws. It is important to note that all these cases were motivated by an attempt to enforce a confessional public morality through legal means.
While Unifaun Theatre opened a constitutional case claiming that its right to freedom of speech had been breached, the collective behind the Ir-Realtà newspaper, of which I was a part, as well as a number of sympathisers, founded the Front Against Censorship, with a programme of five demands for a reform of the law.
These were: 1) removal of the theatre censorship board’s power to ban plays; 2) amending the pornography law to clearly define what was pornographic material and to decriminalise it in literary works; 3) removal of the obscene libel law; 4) removal of the law protecting religion from vilification and 5) change of the Broadcasting Act to liberalise the content which could be aired after 9pm.
One has to keep in mind that points 2, 3 and 4 were criminal offences and carried prison sentences.
A major problem was also the ambiguity of the laws and wide discretion which police officers enjoyed when deciding who to arraign. Many of those who were affected by artistic censorship were humiliated by the heavy handedness of the ‘morality police’ and had to face its consequences.
Despite the Front’s actions, the situation continued to degenerate up to 2011, when the Maltese people voted in favour of recognising divorce in that year’s referendum.
I must confess that many of us were fearing the consequences of a vote against divorce. It would have definitely emboldened those politicians and public officials who had embarked on the censorship crusade, while at the same time turning a blind eye towards corruption, which amusingly was never a ‘moral issue’ for them.
After the referendum legalised divorce, there was somewhat of a seismic shift in Maltese politics, with the entire political class wanting to appear more liberal (despite certain irreducible voices among its members).
This created the conditions for then Minister Mario de Marco’s theatre reform, which dissolved the censorship board and passed to a system of self-classification.
Under these arrangements, Camilleri and Vella Gera would never have been wrongfully prosecuted and uselessly defamed
This was an ambitious move in and of itself, although further progress in this direction proved to be a step too far for the Nationalist administration.
When the Labour government came to power in 2013, a commitment to reforming the censorship laws was part of its electoral manifesto. The recent announcement by Minister Owen Bonnici is thus the culmination of this process and the start of a root and branch censorship reform which looks to address a number of issues which many thought were politically impossible to attack just a few years ago.
The laws of Malta are littered with provisions for censorship. The present exercise will reform those present in the Criminal Code, which are also some of the most controversial.
The first significant reform is the removal of the articles which protect religion in general (and Catholicism in particular) from vilification. These were somewhat draconian, in that they provided for prison sentences if one criticised various aspects of the religion itself.
While people of a religious persuasion should never be victimised for the beliefs they hold, it is not right either that religion itself should be above criticism. Thus this reform is in line with freedom of expression and against entrenched and outdated privileges.
The second reform addresses the pornography law, which was used against Camilleri and Vella Gera in the Ir-Realtà case. The law finally gives a sensible definition of pornography, which is now defined as that ‘whose intention is principally to cause sexual arousal’. Before this reform, something would count as pornographic even if it ‘put undue emphasis on sex’.
Morever, offences related to distribution of pornography, for instance, have been decriminalised. However it is still illegal to display pornographic images or other content in a public place, unless access to this place is restricted and minors are excluded from it.
Under these arrangements, Camilleri and Vella Gera would never have been wrongfully prosecuted and uselessly defamed (which was an injustice in and of itself, despite the fact that the court subsequently declared them innocent).
The law now also differentiates between pornography as described above and what is termed ‘extreme pornography’.
Extreme pornography is defined as material involving bestiality, necrophilia, rape or involving danger to the life or the health of a human person depicted in it. Behaviour relating to extreme pornography, from producing to circulating the material, has been criminalised and perpetrators can face heavy fines and prison sentences.
Another welcome aspect of this new law is the criminalisation of revenge pornography, a measure which has been introduced in a number of other countries but was still sorely lacking in Malta.
When everything has been considered, this is both a progressive and reasonable reform, which was long overdue.
One looks forward to further amendments in the Press Act, in order to purge from it a number of repressive laws still present within it.
Above all, this is a triumph for artistic freedom and serves as proof that initiatives started by citizens can change unjust arrangements, despite having to overcome many challenges along the way.
Ingram Bondin is spokesman for the Front Against Censorship.