Delia defends safe-house decision fearing election heat could turn against him

The blogger Manuel Delia has confirmed he has been offered a six-month sojourn away from Malta by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, over concerns for his safety in Malta as a “frontline government critic”.

The ECMPF scheme “offers temporary shelter for journalists facing harassment and intimidation as a direct result of their work.”

Delia said this was an opportunity for him “to draw the heat away from my family and I took up the offer”.

The news was originally reported on an Italian website as part of a wider interview on Articolo21, which said Delia was being forced to leave Malta, including his family and children over threats to their safety.

But Shift News founder and editor Caroline Muscat issued a missive on Delia, saying the blogger, who is partly financed by civil society NGO Repubblika, was leaving for a funded programme of work and not because of threats to him. 

“Delia’s efforts in Caruana Galizia’s cause have been valuable, but indulging in this appeal to public sympathy can only deepen the mistrust towards the media, and, in consequence, towards the entire campaign for justice for Daphne,” she said.

Delia posted a defence on Friday morning. In explaining his security concerns, Delia argues he is “misrepresented” by Labour Party media as a “some puppet master of the Opposition leader”; he says that his wife was assaulted in the street, physically hurt and her phone destroyed.

Recently, he was the victim of a two-week campaign of cyber-intimidation, email and website spoofing, text harassment, and anonymous phone calls. Delia claims these efforts appear to bolster egregious claims made by defenders of Yorgen Fenech about the blogger. “I have been singled out… as Yorgen Fenech’s principal enemy in the press.”

Delia also said the upcoming general election places him in a quandary, earmarked as a government critic that should be silenced, by both Labour voters and Nationalist voters who resent the effect his criticism can have on the PN’s fortunes.

“In this heat anyone comforted by the environment of impunity, the propaganda on Labour news media, and the discrediting campaign supporting Yorgen Fenech, might think it heroic to cause me, or my family, or my property physical damage.” 

Before the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017, Delia had participated as a counting agent for the Nationalist Party during the June 2017 elections. He was formerly an aide to Nationalist minister Austin Gatt until 2013.

“Being a truth-seeking journalist in Malta has become a risky business. Caroline Muscat knows and has experienced the intimidation too. Thus, her  attempt to discredit me and cast doubts about my motivations is surprising and saddening,” Delia wrote in his blog.

“I have taken this decision in order to seek, as best I can, the safety of my family. Everybody is free to disagree with that strategy and may feel, as The Shift News evidently does, that leaving them for months while I camp in an apartment somewhere is my idea of fun.”

On Thursday evening, Caroline Muscat hit out at claims by Delia that he is leaving the country over threats, saying the blogger is taking up a paid six-month programme in Europe. “I know that what Manuel is taking up is a temporary 6-month programme in a European city where he can continue to do his work while being paid a salary to take ‘a break’,” Muscat said.

“Any journalist who has faced any serious threat knows that you don’t announce your departure. And if it’s a serious threat, you certainly don’t leave your family behind.”

Muscat said that she called Delia “to make sure [she is] not undermining the threats he is facing.”

“We noticed in his reply to the Italian journalist’s question about how he earns a living, Delia said he depends on the donations from his readers and gets by with the help of his wife,” she said. “Nowhere did he mention that he’s an employee of Repubblika, receiving a full-time salary, whatever the amount may be.”

She said investigative journalists exposing wrongdoing wherever it happens, are often the targets of threats, insults, lies and defamation. “These are dealt with as they happen, and we carry on with our work to the best of our abilities, undeterred by the daily onslaught. When and if those threats become serious enough to require action to be taken, we take it,” Muscat said.

She went on to say that such actions damage “the cause of truth and justice for assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia” if opportunities provided to activists are blown to do their work.