Malta Responds to Grassroots Campaign Demanding Asylum for Defecting Libyan Pilots

Last week, two Libyan pilots were ordered to bomb civilian protesters by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. They faced an unimaginable choice: bomb their countrymen or face likely execution if they returned without carrying out the attacks. Instead, they found a third option - flying their planes out of Libya and defecting to the nearby island nation of Malta. In doing so, they saved the lives of untold numbers of their fellow Libyans.

But ever since Malta's Refugee Commissioner Mario Guido Friggieri and other government officials have refused to say whether they will give these pilots asylum.

That led a group of Libyan activists to launch a petition calling on Malta to grant asylum to the pilots. Within 24 hours of launching the petition earlier this week they had tens of thousands of signatures, more than 1,000 signatures an hour!

The petition was set up to automatically generate an email to more than two dozen senior Maltese officials every time someone signs it, including the country's president, attorney general and minister of justice. This means the entire leadership of Malta has effectively had their direct, personal emails 'bombed' all week.

Still, no response. My colleague Weldon Kennedy (Director of Organising for Human Rights) and I have called dozens of offices, and received dozens of promises of calls back.

Eventually we reached an official spokesperson for the ministry of justice.

"We are aware of a number of emails being sent to our accounts, and we appreciate that this case is raising a lot of international attention, but I cannot comment on this case and I’ve been refusing many requests for comments on this case," Darrell Pace, the Ministry of Justice spokesperson told Change.org. "The problem is this: our Refugee Act prohibits anyone to speak about the case until it is decided. So at this stage it will be difficult for me, the commissioner or the minister to comment about this specific case."

"All I can say is that the request is being accessed according to its merit," he said. "The process is pretty clear in our law and follows the Geneva Convention."

"There is no specific timeline, the maximum is one year but I don’t think that will be the case here," he added. "It’s more a question of a few weeks or months."

That may not sound like such a significant statement, but it's an important first step, establishing that:

1. Senior officials in the government are aware of the petition.
2. The government of Malta is feeling the pressure on this issue.
3. The Libyan pilots are being processed through an asylum procedure guided by the Geneva Convention. This should, in theory, mean they will eventually be granted asylum given their circumstance.
4. A decision is expected in a few weeks or months.

Winning this and similar campaigns depends on our ability to quickly call on thousands of supportive folks like you. After signing the petition below, please click here to follow us on Facebook - just click ‘Like’ at the top of the page.

Photo credit: MilborneOne