‘They would gladly see me dead’

“They would gladly see me dead, which appears to be the only way I will shut up,’ assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote on her blog four months before her death.

Her writing haunts a video produced by Cologne-based artist Joanna Vortmann through a scholarship received by German journalist Iris Rohmann in March.

Rohmann is the recipient of the Daphne-Caruana-Galizia-scholarship of the ReporterFORUM Berlin.

Her words are brought to life through the voice of her sister, Corinne Vella.

The video is presented in a loop and can be viewed as an endless circle. Her writing on democracy, the freedom of press and how both of them are endangered by corruption take a central role.

“Free speech is ultimately the basis of our democracy which we should never be afraid to protect for ourselves and for each other… There is something else I should say before I go: when people taunt you or criticise you for being negative or for failing to go with their flow, for not adopting an attitude of benign tolerance to their excesses, bear in mind always that they and not you are the ones who are in the wrong”.

The full video will be shown at the vigil marking seven months since Daphne’s assassination on Wednesday 16 May at her memorial in front of the law courts in Valletta at 7.30pm.