Humanity’s most prized treasure is freedom.
It is the underlying motivation for everything we’ve ever done. Even, ironically, the most restrictive thing we’ve ever created: the state.
By definition, the state seeks to limit what you can do. Being a citizen who is subject to a government’s will means you accept its laws and, by extension, the restrictions that those laws must impose. It is, as we’ve pointed out before, a contract. Like any other contract, it is only valid if all parties make it a point to uphold their end of the bargain.
So, if we love freedom so much, why did we create something that restricts it?
At some point, we figured out that agreeing to a common set of rules makes living together easier. For better or for worse, this idea is the foundation of all organised society. The state was meant to be the final prototype model of such organised society: a system that elects representatives whose task would be to govern the rest of us. If we don’t like them, we remove them, and on the cycle proceeds.
A crucial aspect of governance is law enforcement. Yet again, a paradox presents itself. Law enforcement requires even tighter restrictions on freedom: rule-breakers must be punished. It is argued that these serious restrictions are necessary for the preservation of order, and therefore, the protection of all others. Once more, collective freedom, at the expense of individual freedoms.
In poorer words, this is the deal. We collectively give up freedoms in service to the state under the assumption that, in return, the state will protect and preserve social order, deal with rule-breakers swiftly and effectively, and ideally, be in a position to respond to potential crimes before they even happen.
All of the above is theoretical groundwork for the point I’d like to make with this column. I am at pains to preface what I’d like to say about the femicide of Nicolette Ghirxi because I’d rather throw off the reader with an introduction that will become relevant later than leave room for misunderstanding, so bear with me.
The background of this femicide is now well-known thanks to the efforts of the mainstream press. Within 48 hours, Malta’s biggest newspaper had information about Ghirxi’s background and how she was murdered, the context of the estrangement between her and the man who murdered her, Edward Johnston, the murderer’s manic attempts at portraying himself as a successful trader, and even details about Johnston’s suicide-by-cop at the end of a long stand off.
I am not taking shots at any of the newsrooms reporting on this case. Merely contemplating the act of murder is something that shocks most human beings to the core, let alone hearing about when it actually happens. It is a natural response to one of the most heinous acts we can commit, and newspapers are duty-bound to report on something which people will inevitably talk about. As long as reporting focuses on relevant facts above salacious details, it is all well within the realm of public interest for obvious reasons.
On the contrary, I would like to point out that if the press could assemble all this information within 48 hours, then it can be safely said that the police force failed to respond to what was a clear, undeniable threat to Ghirxi’s life.
This is the angle that deserves to be put under the spotlight, because it is the same angle that crops up with every femicide that happens in Malta: the state is unable to uphold its end of the contract which I referred to in the introduction. Malta’s law enforcement apparatus is unable to take adequate preventive action, even when it has advance notice of a potential threat to someone’s life. It is unable to arrest, arraign, and punish those who present a threat to social order in a timely manner.
More specifically, Ghirxi’s femicide tells us that Malta’s law enforcement system is not capable of saving the lives of women who are in danger, nor is it capable of correctly identifying what constitutes a threat to women’s lives.
Ghirxi filed two harassment reports against Johnston in April. She did not carry out a risk assessment at the time because Johnston was abroad, and the victim determined that she was not at risk when the assessment was offered to her. Throughout May and June, however, the harassment continued online, with Ghirxi filing more reports. In spite of Johnston’s severe harassment – which included slanderous attempts at getting her fired from her job through the use of fake accounts – it was nonetheless determined that Johnston was not a threat.
Right up until the last Thursday before she was murdered, Ghirxi told the police she felt the threat escalated the minute she (correctly) suspected Johnston was back in Malta.
Up until the point in which the police were in contact with Ghirxi, the state’s monitoring of the situation was already questionable. The police commissioner’s insistence that the victim had told them she did not feel like she was under threat is not a blanket excuse for failing to look into the nature of the threat any further. Any good police officer should know that a few extra steps in that situation could have prevented the need to take much more drastic action later.
The minute the police failed to take immediate action to locate and interrogate Johnston as soon as Ghirxi informed them about his arrival is the minute the state completely failed. Four days later, Johnston made his way to her and stabbed her to death. At no point did the police commissioner state that the police force attempted to locate Johnston in those four days, which is all it took him to enact a revenge fantasy on an estranged partner.
Ghirxi, like all other women in a country that keeps failing to come to terms with its deeply ingrained patriarchal depravities, was not free.
Even though she signed the same social contract as everyone else in our country, Ghirxi was not covered by the state’s protection. On the contrary, she sought that protection and remained without it. A state that cannot protect all of its citizens from all forms of preventable harm, even when those same citizens come knocking at its door repeatedly, is a state that is breaching its contractual obligations. It is in default.
If Ghirxi was not free, then no other woman is free. If no other woman is free, then none of us are free, because our collective freedom is always subject to which individual freedoms we are willing to barter with.
If the state fails to police gender-based violence, then the freedom to commit such violence will continue corroding every woman’s collective freedom to exist without being terrified of what might happen to them.
