The Constitutional Court's finding in respect of the "Stitching" case led to a number of, frankly speaking, pretty predictable reactions.

Let's get a few things out of the way before moving on: this was merely the first judgement in this matter and as already intimated, the plaintiffs are going to move up a notch to the Court of Appeal. After that, if they lose again, there's the European Court of Human Rights, which generally has something to say about cases like this, though it seems that at least in one case, what it had to say wasn't necessarily music to the ears of the people who were claiming a breach of their rights.

But anyway, this isn't a learned work about human rights law or an analysis of the judgement: suffice it to say that, due respect and all that, I don't agree with the interpretation given and that I hope that the Court of Appeal will find the same way as I do. I think, for instance, that the Civil Court didn't give sufficient consideration to the fact that this is an artistic work that people choose to be admitted to watch.

That having been said, it is a fact that the courts in this country are bound by the laws that our dearly beloved politicians put, or leave, in place and judges don't make the law, they interpret it. Within this context, the judge in this particular case felt that the law should be interpreted more, rather than less, restrictively in respect of the play in question.

In effect, leaving aside some obiter dicta that perhaps were somewhat less than essential, what the judge concluded was that the censorship board's subjective and, to put it bluntly (which I am but the court didn't) narrow-minded take on the play, and the banning consequent thereon, did not breach the right of freedom of expression because there is always a residual power allowed to the state to curtail this freedom in the interests of whoever it is that the state should protect.

In this very limited respect, the court's position is not a million miles from my own when I point out that filthy racists have no right to freedom of expression because what they are denying are even more basic freedoms to others. I don't think that the play falls within this definition, but you can see the reasoning.

The reactions that flowed out when the judgement was reported were, however, worrying in themselves. I'm not referring, of course, to the reaction of people who think censorship is anathema to true freedom (which it is) and who vowed to fight on, passionately.

The ones who worried me were the triumphalists, the ones who saw the judgement as a vindication of their ultra-conservative position, as evidence that, verily, Malta is a bastion of decency and righteousness. Many of them, such as the ones who signed themselves "Farrugia" and "Demartino" (I've no idea if these are real or made up surnames) could almost be seen dancing a merry jig around an effigy of the author and the producer of the play, crowing mightily and punching high-fives into the air.

These are people who are seriously deluded, if they think that this particular swallow is going to make their summer.

This was one, single, case which got off to a singular start because the board of censors, with not a little arrogance, thought it had the right to tell us, adults one and all, what we can, or cannot see. If this bunch of hide-bound conservatives were to do it again, they would have another case on their hands, and then another, and then another.

And if they - or people like them who think that this country has really lurched to the fundamentalist right - think that this case is going to give them some sort of power to get into people's book-shelves, into people's DVD libraries, into people's Net browsers and, heaven help us, into people's bedrooms, then they'd better think again, because this case gets them precisely nowhere in their control-freakery.

In other words, people, butt out, this case has helped you not at all in your mission to mould the nation's psyche into what you think it should be. We, the people, have a brain and we're going to carry on using it, whatever any fundamentalist cleric, lay-person or pseudo-arbiter of taste and discernment may try to say or do.

And while on the subject of worrying reactions, might I, with not much respect, ask that for the future, when people feel moved to express themselves about something like this, they don't invoke the "what would foreigners think about us" mantra?

Frankly (there's a lot of frankness about this week) I don't give a tinker's cuss what "foreigners" think about us but I care a darn lot what I and other citizens of this republic think when our fundamental rights and freedoms are trampled on by censors who seem to think that their world-view is the only one which counts.

imbocca@gmail.com

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