Monkey pee, monkey poo…

Last week, a Detention Services officer was suspended for passing 'racist' remarks while testifying in the ongoing Mamadou Kamara murder trial.

Dominic Seguna was on duty at the Safi detention centre at the time of the incident, and on the witness stand he described the rest of the detainees as "monkeys clinging to (or hanging from) the fence"... adding that were it not for the presence of detention services personnel, they would have attacked Kamara themselves, and turned him into a 'black omelette'.

Yes, folks, he really said those things in open court; and the only discernible reaction on the part of the presiding judge was... to do nothing at all.

This was a Tuesday, by the way; and Wednesday's edition of MaltaToday (which I edit) reported the incident on the front page, under the headline 'Migrants described as 'monkeys' as Kamara trial begins'.

I don't mind disclosing that, though I didn't write the court report itself, I chose the headline and also took the decision to place it on the front page. And to this day I still find it shocking that a court of law in a supposedly civilized, 21st century country would permit that sort of language without so much as batting an eyelid... suggesting in turn that this is not only acceptable in the eyes of the judiciary, but also perfectly natural.

And yet it is not acceptable: not even if we were dealing with a one-off incident in any given court case. Placed in the context of a murder trial which hinges precisely on 'racism' as a perceived motive...well, the very idea that such a comment should be allowed to stand, and even be entered into the court record, is quite frankly distressing.

Worse still, it is also very clearly endemic to our legal system. Derogatory remarks based on skin colour and/or ethnicity are not exactly unheard of in the Maltese law-courts: they are actually commonplace, and far from putting their foot down when confronted by such cases, there have been judges who have even used such language themselves... thereby cementing the ghastly perception that racist language is perfectly acceptable in our legal system, where other cases of verbal discrimination are not.

It was only a few weeks ago that a deceased Somalian migrant was alluded to as 'dak l-iswed' ('that black man'... or 'that nigger', 'that darkie', 'that wog', etc.) throughout his own murder trial: not just by the defence and prosecution - which would have been bad enough - but incredibly, even by the presiding judge.

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To date, I have not heard of any repercussions associated with this incident. The Commission for Administration of Justice has had nothing whatsoever to say about wholesale racist language permitted and even encouraged in court; which is perhaps unsurprising, seeing as nobody knows exactly what this commission is meant to be all about anyway. All things told, I can only conclude that the Maltese law-courts see absolutely nothing wrong with this kind of language being used on the witness stand. My only question is: does that count only for 'niggers', 'wogs' and 'darkies'? Or are we free to insult and/or dehumanise all other minority groups, too?

By the same token, I suppose I should technically be allowed to take the witness stand in a Maltese court, and refer to a woman (any woman) as 'dik il-qahba' ('that whore')... or to an openly gay person as 'dak il-pufta' ('that faggot')... or how about referring to a physically disabled person as 'dak l-immankat' ('that retard')?

Honestly, now. Would the presiding judge or magistrate allow that sort of language, I wonder? I would like to think the answer in each of those cases would be a resounding 'no'. So again: why is it OK to use dehumanising and demeaning turns of phrase in the case of people whose skin happens to black... but not people whose gender, sexual preference or any other specific circumstances happens to be equally different?

Meanwhile there is another, more serious anomaly staring us all in the face. Coming back to Seguna's suspension, and it turns out to have been an initiative taken by Detention Services itself - and NOT by the law-courts, which to date have not made any move to suggest that there is, in fact, anything amiss with racist language in court.

And who is responsible for Detention Services? Following former Justice Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici's resignation last May, the answer is now Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

Naturally I do not know if it was Gonzi in person who took the decision to discipline Seguna for his remarks in court. What I do know, however, is that Seguna is only a DS official: which, if you look at Malta's entire immigration policy in terms of a 'food chain', places him on a rung slightly above the amoeba, and slightly below the mosquito larva.

All the way at the top of the same food chain - i.e., at Great White Shark level, so to speak - is of course Gonzi himself, as the minister responsible for the policy that Seguna and his colleagues try to implement as best they can at ground level.

This also means that people like Dominic Seguna are the ones who get to deal with the ghastly rot that invariably accumulates at the bottom of the ladder, when it transpires that the policies concocted by people at the top - i.e., people who have no hands-on experience of the logistical problems involved in immigration at all, and who rarely, if ever, bother to even try finding out - simply DO NOT WORK.

View this in the context of Seguna's 'racist remark' in court, and... well, one or two questions immediately spring to mind. For instance: can anyone explain to me the logic in so severely punishing a simple detention services officer ... whose only crime was to do something that even judges occasionally do, without paying any price whatsoever? Are we to understand that it is perfectly OK for a judge to describe a black man as the equivalent of 'nigger'; but woe betide that lesser mortal who so much as thinks about describing the same black man as a 'monkey'.... Because, oooh, it's as though an invisible barrier of decency has suddenly been crossed.

If this is indeed the case, I can only conclude that the traditional maxim that underscores most civilised legal systems worldwide is hopelessly incorrect when applied to Malta. In this country, the law is not applied 'equally to everyone', on at least two counts. One, because minorities such as 'niggers' (but not 'whores', 'faggots' or 'retards', etc.) are clearly treated using an entirely different yardstick from anybody else; and two, because a similar difference in weights and measures also applies between, on the one hand, an elite class which includes the judiciary... and on the other, the rest of us common mortals down here at the bottom of the food chain- including not just Dominic Seguna, but also you, me and just about everybody else.

And that, I greatly fear, merely scratches the surface of the ugly, hypocritical reality that Seguna's suspension so graphically exposes for all to see. For in all this talk of 'justice for Kamara', 'institutionalised racism', etc., we appear to have forgotten that what is really on trial here is not just a single detention services employee - or even three AFM officials - but Malta's detention policy as a whole.

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Try looking at it this way, even if only for a moment. Individual DS officers like Seguna may well describe detained migrants as 'monkeys' - and for all I know much worse besides - but last I looked, it was not exactly Seguna who decided to coop those same people up in such clearly monkey-like conditions to begin with. Oh no. It was people like Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, whose government both devised and defended the arbitrary detention system, and who is himself now directly responsible for its every aspect. So when all is said and done, it was actually Lawrence Gonzi's policies that have stripped thousands of mostly African migrants of all their human dignity: by locking them all up in monkey cages for as long as 18 months; by feeding them monkey food, and leaving them to wallow in the human equivalent of 'monkey-pee and monkey-poo'... with as many as 40, 50 or 60 people forced to share two or three toilets among the lot of them... or left to scamper about barefoot in a fenced space with only a flimsy canvas tent to protect them from the elements.

These are things I have seen myself, having been admitted (only once, and very briefly at that) into the Hal Far closed detention centre in 2009. And I am told Safi is much, much worse.

So how can I - or anyone else, for that matter - bring myself to blame a man like Seguna for almost unwittingly indulging in racist imagery... when the entire detention system itself forces us all (most especially the DS officers who run those camps) to inevitably view these people in terms of caged animals, and not as human beings at all?

And besides: which is the greater crime, anyway? To describe a group of men in terms of 'monkeys'? Or to place those same men in conditions where they have no choice but to actually live like monkeys (and, occasionally, to die like monkeys, too)?

If Seguna's remark about 'monkeys hanging from the fence' was so utterly reprehensible that he should be suspended for even saying it... then what about all those politicians, on both sides of the divide, who have tirelessly used words like 'invasion', 'epidemic' or 'infection' when talking about immigrant arrivals? Do these people not influence popular perceptions far more than the Dominic Segunas of this world? And if so: why do we throw the book at people like Seguna over a single remark, but then say nothing whatsoever when the Mifsud Bonnicis, the Tonio Borges, the Michael Falzons (PL version), the Joseph Muscats, etc, routinely use much more irresponsible language, with far more severe consequences, to describe the same people?

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But of course, as in all other things, we have simply turned all notions of common sense on their heads. In 21st century Malta, it is now evidently a crime to merely talk about an existing system... but not to either devise or implement that same system; still less to retain it in full, even after it has been lambasted for the umpteenth time by all the world's serious human rights organisations.

And we call the migrants monkeys? Honestly...