Daphne and Giovanni – Lessons for the European Union from Indian journalism and law

Daphne Caruana Galizia a Maltese journalist and Giovanni Falcone an Italian magistrate were blown up in ir cars 25 years apart leaving body parts on our conscience. Maltese and Italian mafia h struck. If magistrate’s murder raised questions about Italian mafia in 1992, Daphne’s death in 2017 raises very serious questions about commitment of European Union (EU) to fight mafia within. w. As it reaches out to India as a tring partner and ally, it has valuable lessons to learn from India’s unsung journalists and lawyers who brave all odds, live in small towns and take on mighty local leership because y have faith in India as world’s largest democracy.

Daphne’s story is gut-wrenching. only or time I felt as outrd and sick to core was when Falcone, judge and prosecuting magistrate was killed in 1992. He h fought all his life to overthrow Sicilian Mafia and his work resulted in a spectacular 1986 – 1987 court case where mafia dons were dragged to courts. Five years later his car was blown up by Corleonesi Mafia on a motorway, his insides splattered all over. re’s a hierarchy in Italian mafia’s killing fields like in Bihar and Uttar Presh. This was a dely one. Falcone’s travel plans were a tightly guarded secret. It was an inside job. I used to write for Swiss-French daily Le uveau Quotidian and found myself at a loss of words, gutted and diminished by Falcone’s murder. Pigs and cowards h penetrated all aspects of Italy’s political and ecomic life. Pigs and cowards – everything else I felt is unprintable.

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I went through same revulsion and anger as I re-re in detail about Daphne’s dastardly murder by a Maltese mafia government pretends does t exist and allegedly is a part of. Her car blew up as she left home and her family h to deal with body parts of a mor who h defied death threats ever since she put pen to paper. I recently re her son Paul Caruana Galazia’s soulful retelling of who his mor was, her fight and her murder. You should too, if you want to understand what investigative journalism really means. Re here. 

Daphne’s family wants perpetrators of her assassination to face justice. EU has to secure and clear so investigative journalists can do ir work without fear or favour. Daphne’s son Matw Caruana Galizia is w fighting numerous cases that were slapped on her over years even as he pushes various bodies EU to own up and clean up mafia within. A journalist and software engineer who with two ors founded International Consortium of Investigative Journalist’s (ICIJ) Data and Research Unit in 2014, he was a le engineer on six major investigations which included Swiss Leaks and Panama Papers, Offshore Leaks and Parise Papers. Panama Papers was result of hundreds of journalists working toger worldwide. effort won a truly deserved Pulitzer.

I h followed Falcone’s work and spectacular Mani Pulite effort by judges in Milan, business capital of Italy, that placed hundreds of businesses and ir hes under rar, exposed links between Italian Prime Minister Betti Craxi (who was convicted and fled to Tunisia) and mafia and sent many personalities to jail. His childhood friend from Palermo ( hotbed of Italian mafia) and judge Paolo Borselli was also killed in 1992. Antonio di Pietro, a prosecutor in Mani Pulite stood strong. trio wanted to clean up Italy. I was looking for information and patterns to see if I could learn something for my work investigative work for Bofors in Switzerland and Sweden n because I h traced money trail to Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi, a family friend of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi in Bofors-India swindle. Paid for by tax-payers in Sweden and India.

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You’re alive because Indians are t exactly efficient in killing people abro, my children told me recently. We laugh and I look around. Increasingly, journalists are open targets. More information and social media have t me m safer. Few if any governments care.

EU is ill-placed to lecture world and I say this because I live here for part of my life. Earlier, it couldn’t tell difference between death of bribe payers and receivers because in it’s colonies. w deaths are closer. Looking or way when drug dealers and warlords in France and Azerbaijan, Germany and Turkey kill journalists because y are investigating ir automatic teller machines and launderettes at heart of Europe – Brussels. Brexit and arrogance have me United Kingdom (UK) irrelevant.

Beyond backing jamborees for journalists and making tall statements, issuing meaningless resolutions and back thumping about how y’re t as b as Washington or Moscow, EU’s work is in crafting and claiming new work is derisory. Institutions have to be built every day, with visible acts of leership and conviction, compassion and understanding. Eurocrats in Brussels don’t care about de journalists, more than Moscow or London, Washington or New Delhi.

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Thieves, thugs and drug lords are buying EU passports to have access to EU’s rule-making bodies. China influences EU’s human rights resolutions through Greece. Malta is w a passport vending machine. All make a mockery of years of justice systems set across Continent after millions of hours of democratic processes and respect for law, justice, civil society and media. mafia has deep pockets and long tentacles and y fund some EU countries that have empty coffers. Inste of protecting ir hard-earned institutional buoyancy, latter is succumbing to check books and sloth, cowards and a much more powerful international mafia.

B money like b news moves at speed of lightning. Both are ruthless, colourless and odourless and kill when challenged. You call sell cocaine in Medellin (Colombia), white money once in Hong Kong and a second time in British Virgin Islands (BVi) and introduce it into Europe’s money veins smoothly. Laws can’t keep pace and bureaucracy is outwitted eir by accident or desire. assumption that right-wing governments are worse than left when it comes to corruption and murder of journalists is spurious. All governments detest investigative journalists. ir first attempts are to corrupt and co-opt and when that fails, y eir kill directly or express shock publicly after it was ‘done’.

Daphne and Giovanni h one nda – truth. y did t wake up every morning to put on a face to meet or faces. Each was driven by passion, professionalism and hard work because y wanted a better world for ir children. Investigative journalism is hard work. Cultivating sources, finding documents, corroborating information, fact checking from names to data, numbers to bank accounts, looking out for planted stories and tracing ir origin is par for course. Investigative journalists are people of passion and compassion and y call power to account because y empathise with those who have platforms and possibilities to speak out. People without voice carry a disproportionate burden of dealing with corruption – petty daily one and massive overarching one that destroys faith and democracies, ecomies and life. Lifelong trust is a critical part of this equation. True investigative journalists are people of impeccable integrity around whom re is t even a whiff of corruption in any form to include money, power, position and doles. y have conflict of interest eir as individuals or through ir families. ne. Seen or submerged.

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Daphne writes her son, wrote Malta’s first political column under her own name and she broke every major political story in country of 450,00 people. She co-founded a Maltese daily and investigated neo-Nazis, drugs and arms traffickers, presidents, prime ministers and judges. Arson attacks slashed cars tyres and death threats meant her family lived in a war zone at home and outside.

Imagine a mor having to check every day if re was a bomb under her car before driving her children to school. Imagine continuing to investigate and interrogate, question and call out EU inaction from a small country where evil h taken deep roots and was spreing across world. Imagine doing it single-handedly. I re her story again and again, as a mor. She d away as her little children tugged at her. copy couldn’t miss a deline, mafia h to be on alert she told her husband. She was one woman standing and brutal murder of a journalist is a responsibility on world’s conscience. For me, she lives, shining a light on evil.

( views and opinions expressed within this article are personal opinions of author. facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in article do t reflect views of Republic TV/ Republic World/ ARG Outlier Media Pvt. Ltd.)