Why Paceville is Malta’s Standing Rock

Comparisons may be odious things... but they can also be rather good fun. And the more improbable the basis for the comparison, the more fun you are likely to have. So without further ado, let us odiously compare the ongoing dilemma at Standing Rock reservation, North Dakota, to the recent hullaballoo concerning plans to reinvent Paceville as a playground for millionaires. (Note: don’t be a spoilsport and ask why. Just run to the hills with it...)

OK, I’ll admit the comparison does hit a few immediate snags. When the Sioux nation (Dakota and Lakota tribes) travelled to their sacred burial sites to protest against an encroaching oil pipeline... there was something instantly iconic and compelling about the visual image. Perhaps because the 19th century wars between the Sioux and the US are still so fresh in our minds (having been emblazoned there by so many classic Westerns) the gesture seemed to instantly capture the global imagination.

Strangely, however, when Paceville residents and small-time entrepreneurs descended upon a public consultation meeting to protest against an equally brazen land-grab scheme... the effect was somewhat less dramatic. Perhaps it’s because they didn’t ride into town on horseback, in full war-paint and with eagle-feathers in their hair. Or maybe because they didn’t rise to perform a Maori haka halfway through the meeting.

So a small word of advice to all those opposing the planned expropriation of private land in Paceville: invest in a few bows and arrows, some buffalo-hide head-dresses and a fire-pit to dance around...and start practising your War Hoop from now. Nothing more effective than a chanted ululation, to get the authorities to change their minds. Oh, and come up with some cool, tribal-sounding names, too. No offence or anything, but ‘Astrid Vella’ and ‘Michael Briguglio ‘ just don’t have the same oomph as ‘Ten Bears’, ‘Crazy Horse’ or ‘Sitting Bull’. There is a certain ‘je ne Iroquois’ that is clearly lacking.

Other than that, the two scenarios are actually remarkably similar. They would in fact be identical, if only the Paceville residents and entrepreneurs had somehow arranged things so that their ancestors all got buried somewhere beneath St George’s Park. As things stand, however, there is simply no local correlative for what is easily the most forceful emotive component of the Standing Rock dilemma. Not only are there no ancestral burial sites anywhere to be seen in Paceville... but the place itself didn’t exist at all until around 40 years ago. You can’t even defend it on urban conservation grounds...

Nonetheless, the underlying issue remains the same. As always, it revolves around the eternal struggle between individual rights and institutionalised theft.  This also means that the core dispute at Standing Rock is equally applicable to the impassioned pleas of Paceville land-owners... who, in different ways, also fear eviction from their own land. Both scenarios pose the same question. Do governments have the right to steamroll over private individuals – or entire ethnic minorities, in the Standing Rock case – just to help maximise the profits of corporations... be they American oil giants, or local property speculators?

The Sioux’s answer to that is a resounding ‘No’. And without entering the purely legal merits of the argument, it is difficult in the extreme not to sympathise with their position. Other ethnic minorities from other parts of the world will have identified with it in ways that we probably can’t even imagine... but then again, you don’t have to be part of a repressed minority yourself to appreciate the argument.

Much more importantly, you don’t need to be personally affected by the outcome of the Dakota pipeline project, to immediately realise that what lies beneath this dispute is far more visceral and universal than the desecration of sacred sites, and the possible contamination of a water supply.

Stripped of all its historical connotations – the echoes of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, or the massacre at Wounded Knee, etc – what is happening at Standing Rock today is indicative of a much wider and more insidious global phenomenon. It concerns the annexation and use of land for the specific benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many: with little or no regard for the rights of the individuals who may be trampled upon in the process... still less for the ancestral memories of the land itself, or its environmental value.

In brief, Standing Rock has come to emblemise the international struggle of the dispossessed and downtrodden, against profit-driven corporations with the full complicity of governments.  It is partly for this reason that the war-song of the Sioux nation struck such a resounding chord with the rest of the world. Even without an entirely natural tendency to side with the underdog... we can all see that the Sioux nation’s struggle today, could very easily become our struggle tomorrow.

If not even the historical sacred sites of such a savagely mistreated people can earn enough respect to be spared desecration... what chance can the rest of us possibly have, if our own land or interests find themselves standing in the way of corporate greed? Let’s not kid ourselves here: the answer to that question can only be ‘absolutely none’. 

If the Sioux nation and their allies fail to halt the Dakota pipeline, it will only illustrate the final triumph of an increasingly thuggish and delinquent form of capitalism over human rights. This is especially true, because the official justification for the pipeline project is rooted in the premise that the ‘national interest’ can and should trump the rights of individuals. Exactly how democracy was allowed to reach this dangerous pass, I’m not quite sure. But that is where we now stand. All those rights you thought you enjoyed as a privileged member of a civilised, developed society? They can all be flushed down the toilet at the stroke of a pen... simply by uttering the magic words ‘national interest’.

What do those words mean, exactly? Sticking to Standing Rock for the time being: I’ll be danged if I can see. How could it possibly be in the US’s national interest, that an area of such pivotal cultural importance to so many people could be raped and defiled, simply to save an energy corporation some money?

Again, the emotive connection is significantly lowered in the Paceville scenario... but the question still holds. The ‘masterplan’ presented by Mott McDonalds this week envisages the wholesale expropriation of millions of euros worth of privately owned property, to be carved up between a handful of developers – and I won’t even go into the issue of whether they were preselected, as they so manifestly seem to have been – to build their own real estate empires.  Whose interest will that serve? The entire nation’s... or those lucky developers’ who will have been gifted other people’s private property for their own profitable use... by a team of international consultants who were last seen working for one of the same lucky developers in question... and with the blessing of a government MP who actually owns a 10% stake in one of the lucky firms?

I mean, come on. If that is what constitutes Malta’s national interest these days, we may as well all hand over our own properties to the same greedy businessmen from now, and just get it over with.

And that’s before turning to any of the legal ramifications. Unless I am very much mistaken, the ‘national interest’ caveat is embedded into Malta’s legislation concerning expropriation and requisition. There is a reason for that, you know. It’s to prevent anyone (government in particular) from abusing the expropriation laws to simply grab other people’s land at will.

But herein lies the snag: there is no actual definition of ‘national interest’ written anywhere into Maltese law. So again: what do the words mean? Traditionally, issues of ‘national interest’ tend to involve important infrastructural works which have no option but to eat into private land. Past examples might include the Birkirkara Bypass, for which acres of private land were expropriated in the 1980s. That example (among several others) proved controversial in its own day... even if the infrastructural project was indeed necessary, and could easily be made to fit into the ‘national interest’ definition.

But the Paceville masterplan? By what stretch of mental gymnastics are we to conclude that expropriation for the sake of purely private speculative development – apartments, hotels, entertainment venues, casinos, etc – serves anybody’s interest at all... other than the few people who will make millions out of the deal?

The Sioux would have no difficulty recognising that scenario for what it really is. A shameful injustice, and a travesty of the rule of law. Strange, how a supposedly Socialist government, that supposedly champions the rights of the downtrodden, would so clearly disagree.