The people at Azzjoni Nazzjonali are mightily miffed because the government has not stood to attention and followed their orders on their pet topic – illegal immigration.
Just in case you weren’t keeping tabs on what Josie Muscat’s party prescribed, the proposals can be boiled down to two: namely declaring that Malta will only accept a set number of immigrants; and suspending those international obligations “which compromise Malta’s sovereign interests” if the other EU countries don’t buck up and relieve us of our “burden”. Well, I’m all for Malta receiving any aid it can get and for repatriation programmes to be set up, but despite what the Azzjoni Nazzjonali people say, it’s not a simple matter of stamping our little feet and threatening not to observe treaties which we have ratified if the other countries don’t play ball.
For those without a head for complexities and who believe that AN have come up with a tough, no-nonsense approach – here’s why the rest of the international community will call our bluff if we go ahead with this blackmail approach.
To start with, we can set as many immigrant limits as we want. There’s no way any government can stem the tide of migration from the African continent. It’s a modern phenomenon and love them or hate them we have to realise that immigrants will continue to flee from their countries in search of a better life until such time as there is no further political or economic turmoil in their countries. That’s not going to happen for a long time yet. There is also no practical way of keeping people out of our territorial waters. Of course we can erect huge barbed wire fences all round the islands but they might not look too attractive and they might irk Joe Saliba when he’s on a sailing trip with a contractor buddy. So they will continue coming – in large numbers.
“Repatriate them at once!” come the shrill cries from the Azzjoni Nazzjonali quarters. Again – easier said than done. In the absence of identification documents or passports it’s not that clear just to which destination we’re going to jet the illegal immigrants back too. As to the suggestion that we should give them a temporary visa so they can fly away to the continent – this might seem like an ingenious suggestion but what’s to stop the recipient countries from jetting them back here the instant they set foot on foreign ground? It’s happened before when the Italians sent back immigrants which Malta refused to accept.
Oh, then we come to that final threat – suspending our international obligations. Ever since Dom Mintoff made a scene in some international forum, a good many Maltese have deluded themselves into thinking that hard-man tactics have advanced our cause. They haven’t. Screaming, yelling, table shoe-thumping and suspension of treaties fall very much in the same category – silly antics which serve only to embarrass the rest of us and to make Malta the subject of ridicule. AN should also remember Newton’s law, which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is equally applicable to international relations. If we suspend our international obligations, do we really think that other countries won’t react and continue in their dealings with us as if nothing had happened? Of course not. There will obviously be repercussions – international censure and probably even the stemming of aid and co-operation in certain fields. That’s the long and short of it. There are no easy solutions and this holds true whether you’re a raving right-wing migrant-hater or a bleeding-heart liberal. Josie and co. should accept this and stop acting as if they’ve come up with a sensible solution. They haven’t.

We tend to think that Malta is the only island “besieged” by irregular migrants. It’s not. Britain is a larger country with much greater resources which still has to come to terms with the fact that its borders are porous and that the phenomenon of migration is here to stay. Again, that segment of the population which wants to see the back of migrants is not unique. Many British feel that way too. Evidence of this is a recent leader in the Daily Express. The High Court ruled that 70 failed asylum seekers from the Congo could not be deported because it had not been established that the Republic off Congo was a safe place and that they would not be tortured on arrival. The leader enjoined the government to make it plain that “Britain is not the nursemaid to the world and that we do not have the resources or the will to support every asylum-seeker with a hard-luck story who comes to our shores.” Sounds familiar, no? Yet, the British have not managed to solve the problem. We’d be very presumptuous to think that our pat solutions are the answer.

It was brave of Labour MP Evarist Bartolo and his wife Gillian to bare all and give an interview about their daughter – Louisa’s – battle with anorexia nervosa. Perhaps it was even more difficult for her to reveal what is (wrongly) perceived to be a shameful secret to the public and to come out in the open with a searingly honest account of self-imposed starvation and personal anguish. Yet, Louisa Bartolo has done just that. In an attempt to highlight the incidence of people suffering from eating disorders within Maltese society and to show that help is at hand for such people, Louisa Bartolo has initiated the “Taste Freedom” campaign. This is aimed at revealing the risk factors of such disorders, explaining what parents and friends can do to help those who they suspect might be suffering from such disorders. The user-friendly campaign website www.tastefreedom.org also lists the contact details of the division within the Health Department to which people seeking assistance can make their queries. Louisa Bartolo and her family are to be commended for not being afraid to publicise their ordeal and to try to help others to overcome experiences similar to the painful one which they have overcome.
I’m not surprised that there are quite a few people suffering from anorexia nervosa and bulimia and that their numbers are swelling. Although the local media has been kicking up a fuss about our obesity epidemic and the fat children that seem to be waddling everywhere, there has been much less of an outcry about the weight-obsession which is one of the cultural factors which may give rise to eating disorders. Maybe that’s because a large segment of the media thrives on this obsession with weight and the size zero craze. You simply can’t get away from magazines detailing Victoria Beckam’s dieting secrets (basically consisting of edamame beans and a small handful of strawberries) or Renee Zellweger’s weight gain woes. There are glossies which have made it their mission to record every ounce or half-inch gained by every celebrity who has ever stepped out into the light of the paparazzi snaps. And though they may occasionally tut-tut over the sorry state of the skeletal Nicole Richie, the instant her stomach swells slightly away from its standard concave indentation, they’re back to headlines about bulging bellies and wondering whether she’s pregnant. There’s no getting away from it: the ideal is one of impossible slenderness, a size 6 or 8, and not of a healthy but larger size. It’s no wonder that competitive dieting is becoming the latest fad and that body fascism rules. With a society which sets such store with thinness, it is hard not to be caught up in the extreme dieting trap. Hopefully, there will be many people out there who can learn from the experience of the Bartolo family and avoid going through what they went through.