Forensic experts walk in a field after a powerful bomb blew up a car and killed investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Bidnija, Malta, Oct. 16, 2017.Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters
Matthew Caruana Galizia is a journalist and software engineer who has worked on investigations into international corruption for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Andrew Caruana Galizia is a Global Leadership Fellow and Strategic Intelligence Lead at the World Economic Forum. Paul Caruana Galizia is the finance editor at Tortoise and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.
For more than 30 years, our mother, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was Malta’s most famous journalist. It was lonely: She was the first woman in the country to write a political column and the first person to write one in their own name. She co-founded one of our daily newspapers and broke story after story until her assassination in a car-bomb attack, in broad daylight and metres from our home, on Oct. 16, 2017. There is still no justice for her or her work.
Our mother uncovered a network of offshore companies, in jurisdictions from Panama to the British Virgin Islands, that Maltese government officials allegedly used to launder the proceeds of their corrupt deals.
Unchecked corruption in Malta is spreading across our fellow members in the Commonwealth and European Union. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) described our government’s cash-for-passports scheme, a shadowy deal our mother uncovered in 2013, as undermining the security of the European Union, “fomenting corruption, importation of organized crime and money laundering.”
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta in 2015, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said: “The Commonwealth should play a leading role in the fight against corruption.” But according to the Corruption Perceptions Index since 2015, Malta has seen the sharpest deterioration in the control of corruption and the rule of law among European Union member states.
Mr. Muscat’s position as Prime Minister, which the Council of Europe found to be “too powerful” and “a serious risk to the rule of law” in a recent report, has enabled him to exploit weaknesses in our colonial-era institutions to the benefit of his officials. In the past five years, he fired and hired five police chiefs in what opposition leaders say is an attempt to block investigations into officials including his own chief of staff. There is nothing, no law or person, to stop him from doing this.
When law enforcement and democratic checks get to this point, journalists become the last people left standing between the rule of law and those who seek to violate it. Their work becomes more dangerous and its impact is diminished. Like our mother, they become targets of hate and violence.
The few remaining independent journalists in Malta are now under threat. In 2018, Malta fell the furthest in press-freedom rankings in Europe. Reporters without Borders, Article 19, PEN International, the International Press Institute, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, and the European Federation of Journalists have all raised the alarm on press freedom and journalists’ safety in Malta.
Journalists from the world’s leading news organizations, working as the Daphne Project – which was named for our mother – have flown in to investigate what’s happening in Malta and follow up on our mother’s work. Their reports have shown that the problems first revealed by our mother are more extensive than we knew.
Europe has mobilized its institutions. Cross-party delegations of MEPs have time and again raised the alarm on corruption in Malta. The European Banking Authority found that our national anti-money laundering authority is in breach of European law. The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body found Malta’s criminal justice system is paralyzed and its Venice Commission found major rule of law failures.
The Council’s parliamentary assembly assigned, for the first time for an EU state, a special rapporteur to investigate the assassination. The Maltese government has moved against every attempt since Oct. 16, 2017, to seek full justice for our mother.
It will take more action and more voices to achieve justice.
The Commonwealth, of which Canada is a founding member, is there to support its member states achieve democracy, strengthen governance and promote justice and human rights. Malta is facing a crisis in each respect. Instead of leading the Commonwealth’s drive for justice, human rights and good governance, Malta is dragging the community down, quashing calls for justice with an army of PR advisers, lawyers and lobbyists.
We are now calling for a public inquiry into our mother’s assassination. Headed by senior independent judges, it is the only means available to us by which we can learn whether our mother’s life could have been saved and whether Malta is taking steps to prevent more killings.
There is a broader purpose. The public inquiry will be Malta’s truth and justice commission. By investigating the circumstances around our mother’s assassination, it will reveal what has happened to the country our mother held so dear that she refused to leave even in the face of death.
Mr. Muscat has nothing to fear but the truth, but instead of convening a public inquiry, the Prime Minister has dismissed our repeated calls for one. We have now been forced into litigating the request against the government while fighting off his libel action and ensuring that the murder investigation remains free of government interference.
The Commonwealth, like Europe, must take a stand against corruption and for democracy, truth and justice. Without its support, without the healing process of a public inquiry, the Maltese government will take us further away from those ideals and take the Commonwealth with it.
Journalists killed in 2019
Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela
Organization:
Tiger Eye
Private Investigations
Date: Jan. 16, 2019
Location: Ghana
Type of Death: Murder
Leonardo Gabriel Hernandez
Organization:
Valle TV
Date: March 17, 2019
Location: Honduras
Type of Death: Murder
Lyra McKee
Organization:
Freelance
Date: April 18, 2019
Location: UK
Type of Death: Crossfire
Mohamed Ben Khalifa
Organization:
Freelance
Date: Jan. 19, 2019
Location: Libya
Type of Death: Crossfire
Rafael Murua Manriquez
Organization:
Radiokoshana FM
Date: Jan. 20, 2019
Location: Mexico
Type of Death: Murder
Ahmed Hussein-
Suale Divela
Leonardo Gabriel
Hernandez
Organization:
Tiger Eye Private
Investigations
Date: Jan. 16, 2019
Location: Ghana
Type of Death: Murder
Organization:
Valle TV
Date: March 17, 2019
Location: Honduras
Type of Death: Murder
Mohamed Ben Khalifa
Rafael Murua Manriquez
Organization:
Freelance
Date: Jan. 19, 2019
Location: Libya
Type of Death: Crossfire
Organization:
Radiokoshana FM
Date: Jan. 20, 2019
Location: Mexico
Type of Death: Murder
Lyra McKee
Organization:
Freelance
Date: April 18, 2019
Location: UK
Type of Death: Crossfire
Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela
Leonardo Gabriel Hernandez
Lyra McKee
Organization:
Tiger Eye Private
Investigations
Date: Jan. 16, 2019
Location: Ghana
Type of Death: Murder
Organization:
Valle TV
Date: March 17, 2019
Location: Honduras
Type of Death: Murder
Organization:
Freelance
Date: April 18, 2019
Location: UK
Type of Death: Crossfire
Mohamed Ben Khalifa
Rafael Murua Manriquez
Organization:
Freelance
Date: Jan. 19, 2019
Location: Libya
Type of Death: Crossfire
Organization:
Radiokoshana FM
Date: Jan. 20, 2019
Location: Mexico
Type of Death: Murder
Journalists killed in 2018 (motive confirmed)
Abadullah Hananzai
Abdul Manan Arghand
Abdul Rahman Ismael Yassin
Abdullah al-Qadry
Abdullah Mire Hashi
Achyutananda Sahu
Ahmed Abu Hussein
Ahmed Azize
Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela
Aleksandr Rastorguyev
Ali Saleemi
Ángel Eduardo Gahona
Awil Dahir Salad
Bashar al-Attar
Carlos Domínguez Rodríguez
Chandan Tiwari
Gerald Fischman
Ghazi Rasooli
Hamoud al-Jnaid
Ibrahim al-Munjar
Jairo Sousa
Jamal Khashoggi
Ján Kuciak
Jefferson Pureza Lopes
John McNamara
Juan Javier Ortega Reyes
Kamel abu al-Walid
Kirill Radchenko
Leobardo Vázquez Atzin
Leonardo Gabriel Hernández
Leslie Ann Pamela Montenegro del Real
Lyra McKee
Maharram Durrani
Mario Leonel Gómez Sánchez
Mohamed Ben Khalifa
Mohammad al-Qadasi
Mohammad Salim Angaar
Musa Abdul Kareem
Mustafa Salamah
Navin Nischal
Nowroz Ali Rajabi
Obeida abu Omar
Omar Ezzi Mohammad
Orkhan Dzhemal
Paúl Rivas Bravo
Raed Fares
Rafael Murúa Manríquez
Ramiz Ahmadi
Rob Hiaasen
Sabawoon Kakar
Saleem Talash
Samim Faramarz
Sandeep Sharma
Shah Marai
Shujaat Bukhari
Sohail Khan
Wendi Winters
Yar Mohammad Tokhi
Yaser Murtaja
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists