The Maltese know what it is like to have a government that uses the law to justify and legitimise its attempts to stall, distort and nullify the democratic process. They know what it is like to have a government that places broadcasting in a stranglehold to ensure that all its people see and hear is the warped, one-sided message of the ruling party.
They know, too, what it is like for a party that wins the majority of votes to stay out of power and the kind of connivance a government can have with the forces of law and order to ensure it remains there.
Like a number of countries around the world, not least eastern European nations that now form part of the European Union, the Maltese know it because they have lived it.
Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is facing up to five years in prison because an American man she did not invite swam to her lakeside home while she was under house arrest. She has been on trial for the past two months and a decision is expected in the coming days. Few believe there will be a not guilty verdict, even though her home was heavily guarded by the government's soldiers.
Ms Suu Kyi, 64, has been compared to South Africa's Nelson Mandela for the manner in which she has battled the military repression of the Burmese regime through peaceful resistance. A Nobel Prize winner for her efforts to bring democracy to her home country, she has spent more than 11 of the past 19 years in detention. The latest period was due to expire last May.
It has not escaped anyone's attention that the election in Burma is due next year and that this legal mechanism is just an excuse to extend her detention.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon visited the country earlier this month, but he was not allowed to see Ms Suu Kyi. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not go there, but she did talk about the issue at a recent security summit in Thailand.
After saying that bilateral relations with Burma could be possible, Ms Clinton set out the conditions: "We've been clear about the... essential steps: respect the rights of their people, release (Ms) Suu Kyi, and hold open and credible elections next year."
The Burmese state media rejected Ms Clinton's comments as "interference". Many Maltese who remember their own government's attitude to such comments in the early 1980s, and the Foreign Interference Act that was then enacted, will be able to identify with this too.
Yet the only person in Malta to speak out openly on this subject is British High Commissioner Louise Stanton, who said "we must not stand by as (Ms Suu Kyi) is silenced again".
Standing by is precisely what almost every Maltese person has been doing, even though they know how important it is to have support from the outside - no matter how small that voice appears to be - and that there can be light at the end of a long tunnel especially when there is a figurehead to champion a democratic cause.
Ms Suu Kyi needs and deserves vociferous and unconditional backing, especially from people who have been through if not an identical, then at least a relatively similar experience.