02 Nov 17 | Europe and Central Asia, Malta, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features
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On 2 November, the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, Index joined activists and five other organisations for a vigil outside the High Commissioner’s Office of Malta for murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Caruana Galizia was one of the best-known journalists and bloggers in Malta, recognised for her fearless reporting on controversial information surrounding government corruption. On 16 October 2017 Caruana Galizia was murdered in a car bomb attack near her home.
“The murder of a prominent investigative journalist in broad daylight in an EU member state underscores the seriousness of this crime,” said Hannah Machlin, project manager for Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom programme. “Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work as a journalist to hold power to account and shine a light on corruption is vital to maintaining our democratic institutions.”
Credit: Cat Lucas / English Pen
Galizia’s blog, Running Commentary, often generated more readers than all of the country’s newspapers combined. At the time of her death, over 40 libel suits had been taken out against her. According to her son, death threats were almost a daily occurrence.
“She knew there was a price to pay, but I never thought it was going to be this,” Gabriel Fraga, a friend of Caruana Galizia’s son, told Index. “Independent journalism is made by people like her. If we don’t protect people like her then we don’t have independent journalism.”
Protesters called on the European Union to hold the Maltese government accountable and to further investigate corruption in the EU.
“I’m hoping that today’s gathering really helps to establish more public pressure on the Maltese authorities and the international community to really take this seriously and investigate it,” Rebecca Vincent, UK bureau director of Reporters Without Borders said. “It’s a vicious cycle of these attacks and then impunity. It really sends a signal when nobody is ever brought to justice that violence is an acceptable means of silencing opinions, which is not the case.”
Attendees of the vigil held signs with the words #EndImpunity and #NoImpunity, chanted and read aloud articles published by Caruana Galizia.
“This shouldn’t silence her. This should fuel people to carry on her work,” Melanie Vella, said. Vella is from Malta and has written pieces for the Malta Times.
The vigil in London was attended by many concerned Maltese journalists. Across Malta, Caruana Galizia’s death shocked citizens.
Caruana Galizia’s work is sure to continue to inspire activists of free expression in Malta and worldwide.
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25 Oct 17 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”96247″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Join us to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists by joining a vigil mourning the death of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered on Monday 16 October.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist and blogger known for her investigative reporting on controversial and sensitive information.
Fifteen days after filing a police report that she was being threatened, Caruana Galizia was killed when the car she was driving exploded.
“We strongly condemn the violent killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. We urge the Maltese authorities to swiftly and thoroughly investigate the circumstances to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Hannah Machlin, project manager of Mapping Media Freedom, said.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
When: Thursday 2 November 1-2pm
Where: Malta High Commission, Malta House, 36-38 Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1J 0LE (Map)
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17 Oct 17 | Europe and Central Asia, Malta, Mapping Media Freedom, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features
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Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist and blogger known for her investigative reporting on controversial and sensitive information.
Fifteen days after filing a police report that she was being threatened, Caruana Galizia was killed when the car she was driving exploded.
“We strongly condemn the violent killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. We urge the Maltese authorities to swiftly and thoroughly investigate the circumstances to bring the perpetrators to justice,” Hannah Machlin, project manager of Mapping Media Freedom, said.
Caruana Galizia ran her own news blog, Running Commentary. The site sometimes attracted as many as 400,000 readers a day (Malta’s population is just around 420,000). Her blog relentlessly exposed corruption among Malta’s politicians. It became the focal point of many legal battles, including multiple libel suits.
In August 2017, opposition leader Adrian Delia filed a lawsuit against Caruana Galizia over stories linking him with offshore accounts connected to sex work in London. She accused Delia of money laundering, claiming that around £1 million earned from prostitution in London flats was being processed through Delia’s Barclays International account in Jersey. Delia filed five libel suits against Caruana Galizia.
Caruana Galizia also published a series of articles accusing Silvio Debono, owner of real estate investment company DB Group, of making a deal with the Malta government to take over a huge area of public land to build a Hard Rock Hotel and two towers of flats for sale. In March 2017 Debono filed 19 libel cases against Caruana Galizia.
When Galizia reported in February that Economic Minister Chris Cardona and EU presidency policy officer Joseph Gerada visited a brothel in Germany while on official business, four precautionary warrants froze her assets. Each politician also filed two civil suits against her.
In January 2016, lawyers requested that Caruana Galizia reveal confidential sources, one of which claimed that the energy minister was seen kissing his communications coordinator. The minister’s lawyers questioned her “professional capacity as a journalist”.
Caruana Galizia was the first to report that Malta’s government minister Konrad Mizzi and chief of staff Keith Schembri were connected to the Panama Papers leak. Her involvement in history’s biggest data leak named her among Politico’s “28 people who are shaping, shaking, and stirring Europe”.
In March 2013 she was arrested for discussing politics on the internet during “day of silence,” a day in which no one in Malta is allowed to publish anything that may have an effect on voters or voters’ intentions. On her blog post recounting the experience: “It was obvious to me that they had come with a warrant of arrest to have an excuse to keep me locked up until tomorrow and away from the internet, literally physically preventing me from writing.”
Caruana Galizia was born in Sliema on the northeast coast of Malta in 1964. She attended the University of Malta and graduated BA in archaeology in 1997. She began her career as a columnist for the Sunday Times of Malta in 1987 and later became the Associate Editor of The Malta Independent.
One of her sons, Matthew Caruana Galizia, was part of the team that broke the Panama Papers. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1508250269158-c7964562-40c9-10″ taxonomies=”6564″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
16 Oct 17 | Europe and Central Asia, Malta, media freedom featured, Statements
Daphne Caruana Galizia
Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed on Monday afternoon 16 October when her car exploded shortly after she left her house.
“We strongly condemn the violent killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. We urge the Maltese authorities to swiftly and thoroughly investigate the circumstances to bring the perpetrators to justice”, Hannah Machlin, project manager of Mapping Media Freedom, said.
Galizia was recently threatened according to TVM.
Galizia was sued in March 2017 by a property developer who filed 19 libel cases against her. In February 2017, economic minister Chris Cardona and his EU presidency policy officer Joseph Gerada filed four libel suits against the journalist.
Galizia had also conducted investigations linking Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat and his wife Michelle, to secret offshore bank accounts revealed by the Panama Papers.
