Repubblika adds anti-mafia mission to civic function

NGO Repubblika has adopted a set of measures to adopt to its list of functions the mission of an anti-mafia organisation.

“Repubblika has since its inception campaigned to raise awareness of the infiltration of the mafia in the economy of Malta as well as its government and state institutions,” it said.

The NGO said the public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia has “recognized” mafia infiltration in the Maltese state and has recommended the adoption of specific anti-mafia legislation.

“Laws alone are not enough to fight the mafia. Honest citizens need to stand tall to protect free and democratic life and they must support and protect officials working within the state’s institutions in the fight against the mafia,” Repubblika said.

A new set of statutory functions have been recommended to the organisation’s members, which will help it take up the role that civil society “is required to play in a democracy.”

The drafting is modelled on anti-mafia civil society organisations overseas, particularly the Italian umbrella organisation Libera dalle mafie with whom Repubblika has a close collaboration.

“Repubblika believes it is intolerable that even after they are indicted for mafia crimes, mafiosi continue to profit from their business fronts and honest citizens continue to subsidise their ill-gotten gains paying the price of social inequality and environmental degradation,” it said.

Repubblika will be campaigning for legislation to confiscate buildings and assets belonging to mafiosi and transfer them to the community as a form of compensation to the community.

“It is not just people who are robbed, cheated, extorted or killed that are victims of the mafia,” Repubblika said. “The institutionalisation of corruption makes victims of all law-abiding citizens and compensation is due to them by mafiosi who are made to face justice for their crimes.”