Student newspaper editor Mark Camilleri is confident the Attorney General will lose an appeal against a court decision which acquitted him and an author of distributing obscenities.
“His arguments are weak – I’m assuming we should win the case,” Mr Camilleri told a news conference organised yesterday by the Front Against Censorship in front of Parliament.
The appeal was filed after a court on March 14 cleared Mr Camilleri and author Alex Vella Gera of publishing an explicit story entitled Li Tkisser Sewwi (Fix what you break) on the University-distributed newspaper Ir-Realta’.
The court held the law did not provide a clear definition of what is obscene and that the prosecution did not provide enough evidence to show how the story offended public morals.
The matter had been reported to police by the University authorities, allegedly by University Rector Juanito Camilleri.
Ingram Bondin from the movement said: “The Attorney General made dangerous arguments in his appeal... we are deeply disappointed at this gross display of public resources used to carry out witch-hunts.”
Mr Ingram contested an argument put forward in the appeal that the story might not be interpreted as fiction because it was a monologue – especially because it was read by minors. This, he argued, was a textbook case of ultra conservative argumentation and legal paternalism.
“If this were the case, every novel written in the first person would have to be treated as suspect and potentially suspect to censorship,” he pointed out.
Junior College students, who were minors and had access to the newspaper, had read Maltese and English literature and saying they were unable to distinguish fact from fiction was “condescending”.
The appeal also used the “usual, dishonest cliché” of attempting to link the story with child pornography and the exploitation of women.
It was also “very disturbing” that the Attorney General – a public official – included religion in the equation where “theological arguments suddenly gain legal significance”.
“The common good becomes the victim, Alex Vella Gera becomes this Satan-like figure, conspiring and striving to pervert the legal system to impose his view on other innocent people,” he added.
Mr Bondin also reiterated the movement’s call to remove a provision in the Press Act which states that print material cannot publish any criticism of public morals and to reform the Pornography Act which, it believes, contains a blanket definition of sex.
Their appeal for a change in the law was also reiterated by Alternattiva Demokratika, which also disagreed with the government’s decision to file the appeal.