In a national outpouring of grief of shock, thousands took to the streets to commemorate anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Galizia was killed in a car bombing and the perpetrators remain unknown.
Carrying banners reading "Journalists will not be reduced to silence" and "We are not afraid," protestors converged on City Gate to commemorate the 53-year-old, who has been described as a "one-woman Wikileaks" for her dogged reporting on political dirty dealing, including alleged financial corruption by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's inner circle, using evidence in the Panama Papers.
Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote in April that Prime Minister Muscat's wife was the beneficiary of a secret company in PanamaImage: Reuters/Darrin Zammit Lupi
While Muscat has described Galizia as his "biggest adversary," he has noted that she went after his opposition rivals as well.
Galizia was killed in a car bombing last Monday, prompting shock and outrage across the island nation.
While a government statement on Saturday promised that "justice must be done, whatever the cost," for many demonstrators, it is the government who was at fault for the tragedy.
"The authorities have blood on their hands. We can't keep on living in a country like this," one protester told French news agency AFP. Another accused politicians of shedding "crocodile tears" over her death.
Maltese politics are a notoriously tangled affair – with the ruling Labour Party and the center-right Nationalists locked in a long-standing stalemate. Party allegiance is often a matter of family ties, and internal one-upmanship is said to be more important than respecting political institutions.
World Press Freedom Day: Persecuted journalists
Imprisoned, tortured, murdered: journalists doing their jobs become the targets of governments, drug cartels, or "ideological fighters." On World Press Freedom Day, DW remembers victims from around the world.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Hamed
Russia: Nikolai Andruschtschenko
He was beaten up by unknown attackers in the middle of a St. Petersburg street. On April 19, 2017, 73-year-old Nikolai Andruschtschenko succumbed to his injuries. The journalist wrote about human rights abuses and criminality. In his last documentation, he reported that President Vladimir Putin came to power through links with criminals and the KGB, the Soviet Union's main security agency.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D. Usov
Mexico: Miroslava Breach
On March 23, 2017, a hired assassin executed Miroslava Breach in front of her house with eight shots to the head. The journalist reported on corruption and crime in the Mexican drug cartels. Her murderer left a message: "for the traitor." Breach is already the third journalist to have been killed in March in Mexico.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/C. Tischler
Iraq: Shifa Gardi
Reporter Shifa Gardi died on February 25, 2017 when a mine exploded on the battle front in north Iraq. The Iranian-born Gardi worked for the Kurdish news agency in Erbil, Rudaw, and reported on the fighting between Iraqi troops and so-called Islamic State (IS) militants. IS terrorists around Mosul continue to kidnap, expel, or murder journalists.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/AA/F. Ferec
Bangladesh: Avijit Roy
"Mukto-Mona," "Freethinkers," was the name of the Islam-critical blog from Avijit Roy. He called himself a "secular humanist," consequently evoking the wrath of Islamist extremists in Bangladesh. Roy was living in the US when in February 2015 he traveled to Dhaka's book trade fair. There, fanatics chopped him to pieces with machetes. Bloggers continue to be murdered by extremists in Bangladesh.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/M. U. Zaman
Saudi Arabia: Raif Badawi
Ten years imprisonment and 1,000 lashes of the whip: that was the Saudi internet activist's sentence. Raif Badawi has been in prison since 2012 for "insulting Islam." In January 2015 he was publically whipped for the first time. After a worldwide campaign for his release, the regime suspended his sentence. His wife Ensaf Haidar and children received asylum in Canada.
Image: Imago/C. Ditsch
Uzbekistan: Salijon Abdurakhmanov
Since 2008, Salijon Abdurakhmanov has been sitting in prison, sentenced for alleged drug possession on the basis of fake evidence. According to Reporters without Borders, the regime pushes drug connections onto its critics in order to muzzle them. Abdurakhmanov's "crime": writing for independent online media and other outlets about corruption, human rights and environmental destruction.
Turkey: Deniz Yucel
German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel has been sitting in a Turkish prison since February 2017. The charges against the "Welt" correspondent: terror propaganda and hate speech. Authorities have not presented proof. Despite massive protest in Germany, Turkish President Erdogan announced he would never release Yucel. More than 140 media members have been imprisoned since the coup in July 2016.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C.Merey
China: Gao Yu
In China, regime-critical journalists, bloggers and activists are under great pressure. These include former DW colleague Gao Yu, who was arrested in 2014 before being sentenced in April 2015 to seven years in prison for the alleged betrayal of state secrets. After international pressure, she was allowed to leave prison and since then, has been serving the rest of her sentence under house arrest.
Image: DW
Azerbaijan: Mehman Huseynov
He publishes a social-political internet magazine, in which he castigates corruption and human rights abuses. Mehman Huseynov is one of Azerbaijan's most popular video bloggers. His campaign, "Hunt for corrupt bureaucrats, blames the country's high-ranking leadership cadre for corruption. He was threatened multiple times and in March 2017 was sentenced to two years imprisonment for defamation.
Image: twitter.com/mehman_huseynov
Macedonia: Tomislav Kezarovski
He was considered to be southern Europe's single political prisoner. Tomislav Kezarovski was inconvenient because he cited internal police reports and investigated the unresolved death of another journalist. In October 2013 in a questionable trial, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half year's imprisonment and upon appeal, to two year's house arrest. He is now writing a book about his time in jail.
