No room for racism

The country was shocked when it learnt that two members of the Armed Forces of Malta were the main suspects of the cowardly drive-by shooting last month in which an Ivorian man, Lassana Cisse, was killed and two other migrants were injured. They are now facing criminal charges over the racially-motivated incident and have, rightly, been suspended from duty.

The AFM has established an internal inquiry which, inter alia, is tasked with ascertaining whether Mr Cisse’s murder and the shooting of the two other migrants were an isolated event or if there are xenophobic cells or affiliations with racist groups within the force.

In examining the reasons for this racially-motivated murder, it is impossible to escape the fact that the AFM (and the other major disciplined force in Malta, the police) recruits its members from the community in which they have been brought up, educated and where they socialise. Evidence has been mounting that racism in Malta is rife. There is increasing anecdotal and research evidence to support the contention that the country suffers from both latent and explicit racism in its treatment of the thousands of black Africans who have been given asylum or...