'#IStandWithPiaZammit' say performers after actor loses libel case

Updated 7.15pm with statement by the Malta Arts Council below

Not murderers, not cannibals, not Nazis: actors have flooded social media with images of themselves playing characters to highlight their concern about a "dangerous precedent" set by a libel judgment. 

Actor Pia Zammit lost a case she had taken against newspaper it-Torċa on Thursday over a front page article that accused her of making light of Nazism. It showed a picture of her at a production of parody 'Allo, Allo, where she had played a role.

Magistrate Rachel Montebello found the article was not defamatory and “failed irremediably” due to the fact that the element of serious harm to Zammit’s reputation was missing.

But the ruling has caused outrage among actors, concerned that the judgment leaves them unprotected and open to malicious misinterpretation of the characters they play.  

Using the hashtag #IStandWithPiaZammit, some of the island's most prominent actors shared pictures of themselves in costume with an added clarification that they were not the character they were portraying on stage. 

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“I've played a Nazi, a transvestite (a German one...