The past week has offered us, perhaps more than any other week this year, copious amounts of content to digest. Some of us have been left feeling all sorts of things, with words like discontentment and disarray coming to mind too quickly. 

Amid a sea of populist, problematic utterances, there was one statement that sank its hooks into my heart. That statement was made by Minister Hon. Evarist Bartolo, who with great certitude said that the country has offered enough help to migrants stuck in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and that it is time we draw a line to safeguard the country which according to him is drawing closer to the bottom of our resource well.

As I scrolled through his diplomatically penned Facebook status, I found myself skipping sentences – I was too focused on a question that echoed at the back of my mind: What exactly is “enough”? 

The current administration has largely left it in the hands of NGOs to push it to do anything about the migrant crisis as well as the conditions that the migrants are made to live in. Perhaps this passive action was their idea of enough – after all, it left little opportunity for people like Ms Michelle Muscat, who recently had her Wikipedia page amended to list her as a “philanthropist”, to show her private Instagram community of admirers what she’s been up to.

Perhaps Mrs Muscat, a titleholder of world citizen international ambassador of disease prevention and public health (yes, I too needed a moment to digest this), rightly thought that the crossover between the migrant crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic was too complicated for her to try to contribute to. But enough about her, for her Instagram account is not the topic of this guest post. 

Like ripples created by a single drop, the sentimentality that Hon. Bartolo’s statement forms part of, is growing. It was only yesterday night that the CEO of the foundation for social welfare services asked for the public to take out their pitchforks and sink a migrant ship. 70 people were on board.

Faster and faster, the sentimentality grows: The Maltese Cabinet announced the decision to close all borders for migrants trying to escape war-torn territories amidst a pandemic. Their excuse is that it is too dangerous to bring migrants in – and there is a possibility, however small it may be, that they are right. After all, they sold off Maltese hospitals, and the COVID-19 emergency response budget made it very clear that the surplus we have been hearing of was nothing more than muffled ramblings echoing in a cave. How on earth could we be equipped to deal with “otherness” when we can barely contain the epidemic as it is? How could we be ready to open the floodgates when the resources we rely on are not enough? 

Or are we using the migrant crisis to deflect from our own shortcomings? 

Even though the answers may lie, in Wordsworthian terms, “apparell’d in celestial light”, no amount of observable facts seem to be enough to enlighten our current administration. It is, for this reason, that I would like to break it down for them.

We form part of a great European family, and in ignoring anti-EU, boomer instigated, baseless nonsense (including my personal favourite, that “Putin is coming to save us”), we have to look at this family as a tool. Tools are only effective if those using them are capable of doing so. If Cabinet thinks there is not enough cooperation on an EU level to help the Maltese migrant crisis, or in stopping human traffickers at the point of departure, they need to be eyeing their own MEPs. After all, there is only so much that Hon. Roberta Metsola can do on her own.

The issue of human traffickers brings us back to Hon. Evarist Bartolo, who earlier said that “urging people traffickers is inhumane.” The only inhumane expression we are witnessing is the necropolitics the Maltese government is adopting – the act of dictating who must and must not die. One cannot simply dictate that migrants must be left out to drown, or worse, have their boats sabotaged, simply because they are conditioned by capitalism and their positions in it rank too low, or simply, not high enough. 

Human traffickers cannot suddenly become a problem in the middle of a pandemic because they make the perfect face case. We cannot suddenly be weighing the morality of evils when our legislative baggage is one that targets not traffickers, but drug addicts, sex slaves, prostitutes, and cutting the life support of those which are most at risk does not solve any problems – it creates more.

The Maltese Cabinet’s decision to do this becomes even more shocking when considering that when it comes to the spread of COVID-19, these refugees are the least likely, out of all communities in the country, to spread the disease: Their fate, whether testing positive or not, is still isolation and quarantine. It is lunatics carrying Maltese passports who are spending weekends by the beach or up to some days ago, driving up to Gozo for picnics or other banal activities, spreading the virus through communities.

Of course, one cannot mention the word banal without conjuring up images of spring hunting, a practice deemed appropriate by Cabinet in the time of COVID-19. Having said this, saving human beings out at sea remains not appropriate enough. 

Humans are not instruments of production. Their usefulness should never be measured, and in the same light, they cannot be turned away or abjected out of a country simply to make room for “sameness” at the expense of “otherness”. But these occurrences are only an insignificant breeze compared to the storm that is coming. It is estimated that there will be 200 million climate refugees in the next 30 years. An unprecedented locust crisis has emerged in West Africa, displacing even more humans. Polar ice and permafrost, containing long-dormant bacteria and viruses, is melting at extraordinary speeds.  

 The crossover between the migrant crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic is a black mirror into the future. Make no mistake: We are in the middle of a very strange war. 

Perhaps it is time for us to say enough, and to do things the right way. 

Postscript: The CEO of the Foundation of Social Welfare has a Facebook cover banner featuring photos of Diana, the Princess of Wales, and Maya Angelou. 

Lovin Malta is open to external contributions that are well written and thought-provoking. If you would like your commentary to be featured as a guest post, please write to [email protected] and add Guest Post in the subject line. Contributions are subject to editing and do not necessarily represent Lovin Malta’s views.