Activist Reports James ‘Mercury’ Mifsud To Police Over Death Penalty Comment
Omar Rababah, an activist with Il-Kollettiv and a member of the Prime Minister’s youth advisory forum, has filed a police report against popular Freddie Mercury impersonator James ‘Mercury’ Mifsud after a Facebook joke devolved into a long and heated argument.
It started when Mifsud posted the following status to his Facebook wall.
“I was at a bar and an Indian asked me ‘yes?’ I told him ‘An ice tea peach please?” He took my order and, after a while, a Maltese barman came up to me and said ‘Sorry, what drink is an AC Beach?’. I told him I ordered an ice tea peach and the barman laughed, brought it for me himself and apologised. We truly have qualified waiters.”
Rababah then commented as follows:
“You laugh at them and yet you dress up, sing and make people laugh as an Indian because Farrokh Bulsara (Freddie Mercury) was an Indian.”
Mifsud lashed out, saying Rababah “does nothing but post on Facebook and turn himself into a laughing stock” and telling him to “go fuck himself”.
“Do you think you can confuse Freddie Mercury’s professional level of English with these illiterate people who cannot understand, let alone speak, English? You are really infamous. Half of Freddie’s family lived in the UK, and his dad was a high commissioner – check your facts before speaking,” he commented.
He followed it up with a more aggressive comment, saying that both Rababah and the person who gave him his job “deserve the death penalty”.
Rababah threatened to report Mifsud to the police and gave him until noon of the following day to delete his comment, which he claimed amounted to “hate speech” and “inciting violence”.
Mifsud was having none of it though, saying Rababah was actually the one who insulted him and asking him whether he was on drugs.
“Is this your defence for wishing the death penalty on me? You should hire a good lawyer and pay him advance because your defence is so weak,” Rababah retorted.
The following day, Mifsud commented that noon had come and gone and called Rababah a “piece of shit”. After some more back-and-forth, in which Rababah told him that he will soon hear from the police, Mifsud said that “both he and the police can kiss my balls”.
Rababah then confirmed that he had filed a police report against Mifsud, particularly over his comment that he and his employer “deserve the death penalty”.
“He crossed the line with that comment. I will not accept that a person, and many people have told me what type of man he is, wishing death on me. This is incitement to violence and hate speech.”
“Since he posts many photos with alcohol, I thought he might still be under the effect of alcohol, so I gave him until noon today to delete his comment. However, he kept it online and added more comments, including insults to the police.”
“Now Mr James Mercury Mifsud, an impersonator of Freddie Mercury, originally, Farrokh Bulsara, must answer in court because I reported him to the police.”
The police have taken a strong stance against comments that people deem offensive in recent years, prosecuting several people and leaving it up to the courts to decide their merit.
The courts’ decisions have fluctuated.
Luke Mihalic was fined €10,000 – reduced to €1,000 on appeal – for joking about people with Down’s Syndrome in a private Facebook group.
A 68-year-old man was recently fined €150 for describing Valletta Cultural Agency chair Jason Micallef as “dirty” and a “trash can full of rubbish”, and another man was also fined €150 for writing a Facebook comment telling PN MP Jerome Caruana Cilia to “stand in front of a moving truck”.
Other cases that the police have brought to court, such as when Daniel Xuereb called River of Love pastor Gordon-John Manche an asshole during a stand-up skit, have been thrown out.
Should the police be involved in dealing with these sorts of comments?
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