News of the killing has shocked the country, with many expressing their disappointment at the fact that the year has once again started on a negative note. 

This included doctor and former PD candidate Anthony Buttigieg, who insisted that foreign women being assaulted by local men was actually quite a common occurrence. 

“As a doctor, I personally have seen several foreign women assaulted by locals,” Buttigieg said in a Facebook post yesterday. 

“Malta is no longer a great country. It has become a sordid, dirty, corrupt periphery of Europe. We can change it and return it to what it was. But we must have the will and we must stop making excuses.”

He apologised to Dembska’s family and her loved ones on behalf of the country. 

Opposition leader Bernard Grech similarly insisted that the country needed to do better. 

“A horrifying act. We must do better. No woman, no wife, no sister, no daughter should fear this fate.

“‘Post her name everywhere, and never let her be forgotten,” said the PN’s political research chief Martina Caruana. The message was also shared by the Sliema local council which uploaded a photo of flowers that were placed at the site where she was discovered by members of the public. 

PN MP Claudette Buttigieg decried the fact that “gender based violence makes women’s life more fragile”. 

“It is scary and saddening that it seems we have started the year with another femicide,” Labour MEP Josianne Cutajar said, calling on the country to continue fighting misogyny, which she said was still “alive and well” in Malta.   

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