A protest opposing Malta's censorship laws will be organised at City Gate on February 24, with organisers seeking as many people as possible to make their voices heard.

The organising group, Front Kontra ċ-Ċensura, was set up in the wake of a 21-year-old editor of a student newspaper facing Court charges over an article.

The October edition of Realtà featured a short story – Li Tkisser Sewwi by Alex Vella Gera – whose explicit content led the university to remove it from campus and to report its editor, Mark Camilleri, to the police.

The Front includes the Realtà Collective, the newspaper's producers, and a number of other groups, including the youth wings of Alternattiva Demokratika and the Labour Party as well as Unifaun Theatre Productions, whose production of the play Stitching was banned in early 2009.

The group's Facebook page has attracted over 3,000 members and it hopes that it will similarly attract large numbers its upcoming protest.

The group plans to organise a National Protest Against Censorship to attract a larger crowd. Starting at City Gate at 1700h on February 24, the group aims to move down Republic Street to the Palace, where it will present proposals to remove artistic censorship to MPs as they enter the building.

In the meantime, Camilleri is awaiting his arraignment in Court. He faces a possible jail term for distributing obscene or pornographic material and for injuring public morals or decency.

Many with red crosses painted on their mouths, a crowd of about 300 people, including politicians and personalities from various cultural fields, walked down Valletta's main thoroughfare to protest against censorship in a Maltese society that does not tolerate what is out of the norm.

Organised by 11 student organisations who came together to form the Front Against Censorship, the protest attracted a strong presence of actors, students, writers and theatre personalities.

We came here to make history. We believe that no one has the right to determine what other people can read, Ingram Bondin, from Front Against Censorship, said.

In the sight of the protest were five laws on censorship, which, the promoters insisted, are antiquated and outdated and carry harsh prison sentences.

They are calling on the authorities to repeal the law banning anyone from making any form of artistic criticism of the country's official religion and to eliminate the Stage and Film Classification Board's power to censor or ban plays and films.

They also want to remove a clause in the Press Act stipulating that print material cannot carry any criticism of public morals and to abolish the Broadcasting Authority's power to ban adult programmes after 9 p.m.

The promoters of the protest also want to see changes to the Pornography Act which, they believe, contains a blanket definition of sex.

Writer Alex Vella Gera is to be taken to court for his text story containing explicit language published on student publication Ir-Realta'.

Student editor Mark Camilleri, 22, is already undergoing criminal proceedings for publishing Vella Gera's story Li Tkisser Sewwi in the October issue of the University campus newspaper. The case has generated much controversy.

The author is now facing the same charges as Camilleri and the court case is expected to be heard on April 20. Camilleri is being charged with breaching Article 208 of the Criminal Code, which deals with the distribution of pornographic or obscene material among others, which could lead to a prison sentence of up to six months or a fine of up to €465.87.

He is also being charged with Articles 3 and 7 of the Press Act, which in this case deal with printed matter directly or indirectly injuring public morals or decency. Under these charges, guilty parties could face up to three months in prison or a fine.

The contentious story, written in 1997, dealt with the male narrator's sexual exploits, written in crude language, and included detailed references to sex with the various women he had. The author said the story had already been published on a blog around five years ago.

Absurd criminal proceedings

Based on article from timesofmalta.com

A group which represents 90 authors, artists and other people involved in culture, has written to the Minister of Injustice and the Parliamentary Secretary for Culture urging them to stop the absurd criminal proceedings being taken against editor Mark Camilleri and author Alex Vella Gera for their article in Ir-Realta.

Grupp said the two government members are politically responsible for the persecution of the author and editor, and for the direct assault on freedom of expression and artistic freedom.

Such actions place our country in the same league as anti-democratic and intolerant regimes, which over the years have garnered a reputation for repressing freedom of thought and expression, whether they use violent means to do so or rely on legal arguments to justify their actions.

The group also appealed to the justice minister and the parliamentary secretary, in their respective remits, to abolish censorship of the arts, to update laws defining obscenity and to stop the criminalisation of art.

Update: Appeal for Euro Help

1st April 2010. See article from timesofmalta.com

The assistance of Malta's MEPs for the removal of censorship is being sought by the Front Against Censorship which in a letter to the country's representatives in the EU said it was very worrying that the Maltese were still not enjoying some of the most fundamental European freedoms.

The Front said that 2009 would be remembered as the year when the supposedly modern and European Maltese State escalated its actions against freedom of speech through draconian actions such as the punishment of carnival revellers for dressing up as Christ, the ban of the play Stitching, the threat of a prison sentence to a newspaper editor for publishing an erotic story and the suspended prison sentence to an artist for a visual which criticised the Catholic religion.

The Front said censorship on arts and entertainment went against the core European principles of liberty and freedom of expression: We are humbly urging you to present this case of affairs to the European Parliament in order to raise the alarm on a European level regarding Malta's repressive and outdated censorship laws.