Another shocking video, a usual pattern: officials physically abusing a black man, while he is lying on the road, unarmed, not threatening anyone. We see him being brutalized, beaten.
He is a black man and in Malta, the life of the blacks is precarious. Humiliation is never far away.
A few weeks ago, the country was shocked because an internal denunciation had revealed that three young policemen had taken the habit of harassing black people for no particular reason.
These policemen, aged 20, 22 and 24, would take them in their service cars to a remote field and beat them up. They would leave them there and drive off to do other things. Colleagues with a conscience revealed the truth.
Ministers were horrified, incredulous. This act was described by many people of good faith as disturbing, inhumane, unacceptable. The police officers were suspended and life went on.
A few months before that, an employer at a construction site had thrown an African migrant who had just fallen off a roof he was working on to the side of the road like an old rag. The employer got him into his car to supposedly take him to the hospital.
But instead, he drove him to a secluded corner and left the poor almost dying man on the side of the road, out of sight. The Ghanaian man crawled to the sidewalk where passersby saw him and rescued him. He was crying, begging that he did not want to die. The employer told him to say that he had been hit by a car.
The country was shocked. Ministers spoke out, refusing to believe that such an action could be possible in the beautiful country of human rights that is the island of Malta. The employer's trial drags on, drags on...
Before that, a Black man was beaten by a bouncer who prevented him from entering a nightclub, because Blacks were no longer allowed in, as the acceptable "quota" of Blacks in the room had been reached. He died of his injuries. The bouncer is still free.
The most disgusting case, if we want to categorize, is that of Lassana Cisse killed by two off-duty Maltese army soldiers one night on April 6, 2019. They had shot him from a car and drove off. Cisse died on the spot and two other migrants in the line of fire were seriously injured. This was the first case of a racially motivated crime. They had shot them simply because of the color of their skin.
This time, the shock had reached the high institutions, the Prime Minister had even talked about it on TV, that's how important it was...
It was the right time to strike hard, to kill the beast of racism, or at least to wound it seriously. It turned out to be a missed opportunity.
Since then, nothing has changed. The two companions are free... on bail, but free.
This country still hates and mistreats Black people. We need clear laws that severely punish the laxity with which the black population is treated here.
For being shocked is no longer enough.