Raphael Vassallo Education Minister Dolores Cristina’s announcement of a ‘new’ National Culture Policy – made on Saturday in the wake of the furore surrounding the Realta’ issue (see feature on pages 7-9) – was met with a sense of déjà-vu among observers in the cultural scene, who informed this newspaper that a similar revision of policy had already been drawn up and approved by Cabinet in 2001... only to be abandoned by the wayside, and eventually forgotten.
“The news this week that censorship laws will be revised is most welcome. But Malta has been ‘officially’ aware of the anachronism of existing legislation at least for the past eight years,” the author of the 2001 policy document, novelist and playwright Mario Azzopardi, said yesterday.
“I was present in September 2002 in Strasbourg, representing the Ministry of Education and Culture at a plenary session of the Council of Europe Cultural Committee, when professor Anthony Everitt, on behalf of a European group of experts in Malta, denounced our censorship laws. He said that in the experts’ judgement, censorship in Malta represents control over the freedom of expression. He told the plenary meeting that such control in Malta is inconsistent with the principles of the Council of Europe and the European Union and should be abolished.”
The original 2001 draft National Culture Policy was commissioned by former Education Minister Louis Galea, and drafted by Azzopardi after a series of consultation meetings with various stakeholders.
A revised version was drawn up the following year, taking into consideration feedback received during the consultation period, but never since published.
Nonetheless, the policy recommendations of the 2001 draft led directly to the establishment of a number of national institutions over the past decade: among them the Malta Arts Council, Heritage Malta, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, the National Book Council and the National Council of the Maltese Language... even if the bulk of the document’s proposals, including those relevant to censorship, were not implemented.
Instead, it seems the document’s entire existence was forgotten within only six years. In 2007, then Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech announced the creation of an independent think-tank to come up with a new culture policy: despite the fact that Azzopardi’s earlier effort had been enthusiastically welcomed by a delegation from the Council of Europe, which described the policy document as ‘illuminating and invigorating’.
Even Zammit Dimech’s own attempt at reinventing the wheel with a whole new cultural policy appears to have led nowhere. Three years later it is now yet another Education Minister – the third in less than a decade – to come up with the same announcement, in spite of the fact that precisely such a policy document has already been in existence (albeit largely ignored) since 2001.
This time, the need for such a policy has been greatly accentuated by what appears to be a dramatic resurgence of censorship in Malta: including last year’s ban on the stage-play Stitching; a clamp-down on naked clothes-mannequins in shop-windows; the arrest and prosecution of Nadur carnival revellers for ‘offending religious sentiment’; and culminating in last week’s announcement of criminal charges against 21-year-old student editor Mark Camilleri, for publishing an ‘obscene’ piece of literature.
“To classify films and theatre is one thing, but to ban a cultural product is unacceptable,” Azzopardi said. “Censorship indicts citizens with the belief they have no grey matter between their ears. And if the brigade for holy guardianship wants to protect our citizens from dangerous forays into immoral zones, it might as well ban the old books of the Bible, for they expose brutality, vengeance, incest, fratricide slaughter and would-be infanticide, willed by a God of wrath. As someone once put it, they who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them for blindness...”
It is not yet clear whether the new policy document announced by Cristina last wekend – approved by Cabinet, and expected to be launched towards the beginning of February, will take on board the recommendations made by Azzopardi’s 2001 draft. Nor is it clear how or to what extent it will curb the ability of institutions such as the Film and Stage Classification Board, or the office of the University Rector, to censor works or literature or art.
However, if the past is anything to go by, there is every chance that even this third attempt at a National Cultural Policy in 10 years will suffer the fate as its two predecessors, and fizzle out into nothing.
Mario Azzopardi is one of 29 Maltese authors who have jointly condemned the ban on Realta’ and the criminal charges brought against its editor, Mark Camilleri
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