Two activists from June’s Black Lives Matter protest are still being investigated by police after raising their middle fingers to counter-protestors.

Police confirmed to Lovin Malta that the case, which was opened after two anti-irregular migration activists, Raymond Ambrogio and Noel Apap, filed a hate crime report has not concluded. 

On 8th June, protestors took to Valletta in solidarity with the international movement Black Lives Matter, an anti-racist tirade amid US police brutality of people of colour.

The sizeable crowd was met with opposition however, with anti-irregular migration protestors countering them with ‘All Lives Matter’ banners and hostile language.

One anti-irregular migration protestor was fined by police after performing the Nazi salute.

Hate speech reports quadrupled in the month of June, with 78 cases of hate crime in just over a week – nearly eight times what had been reported in the first half of May. 

When should you file a hate crime report?

If you witness a case of potential hate crime, reach out to the unit and file a report before posting about it online – you don’t want to tip off the offender to delete or get rid of any evidence they might have.

Reports can be made over any form of speech or action that discriminates against someone purely based on their skin colour, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, political belief or gender. These categories can be found in Article 82A, Chapter Nine of Malta’s Criminal Code.

In order to file a report against online hate speech with a formal criminal complaint, it must include a screenshot of the post or comment; the URL link of the alleged offender’s profile and a screenshot of their profile and the URL link of where the post and comment were originally published.

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