Tag Archives: Country: Malta

C-FAM: The tiny island nation of Malta has been singled out as a human right abuser by legal experts in Europe in preparation for its next review by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Malta’s unforgivable offense is protecting human life in the womb.

Guardian: The outcome document of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) must not undermine previous agreements that put women’s sexual and reproductive rights central to their empowerment, the head of the UN development programme said on Wednesday.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Can a candidate who embraces the Catholic Church’s teachings on issues such as abortion and homosexuality serve as the European health commissioner? Do such views exist as one of many perspectives within a continent full of diverse opinions, or are they incompatible with “European values”? These proved to be the broader questions surrounding the November 13thhearing in the European Parliament evaluating the Maltese designate Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy Tonio Borg.

LifeSiteNews: A consortium of homosexualist, secular humanist and abortion groups are campaigning against the appointment of the Maltese Dr. Tonio Borg as the new EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner. The objection, they say, is nothing more than that Dr. Borg is a Catholic, with “staunchly conservative and outdated” views on homosexuality, divorce and abortion.

Di-Ve.com: The European Court of Human Rights, in a judgment given last Tuesday 17th July, found a violation of a mother’s rights stemming from the fact that, after her children had been put under a care order, she did not have access to an independent and impartial tribunal to review such order after circumstances had changed.

Times of Malta: A Bill regulating in-vitro fertilisation will be presented in Parliament “in the coming weeks”, according to the Social Policy Ministry.

MaltaToday.com.mt: GRM to present political parties with position paper on legal framework for gay marriages.

AP: Maltese will no longer have to travel abroad to divorce, following Monday’s overwhelming vote in favor of finally allowing couples to end their marriages at home on the heavily Catholic island nation.

CNA: Citizens of the island of Malta have voted to legalize divorce, making a choice that the country’s Catholic bishops have warned will lead to family breakdown and a loss of religious identity.

LifeSiteNews.com: “The people of Malta have a choice to make Saturday that will affect the entire country forever,” says Human Life International Interim President Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro-Carambula. “If Malta votes to legalize divorce, it will be a vote to divorce …

Religion Clause Blog: Next Saturday, Malta — which is 95% Catholic– is holding a referendum on whether divorce should be legalized in the country. The London Telegraph reports that Malta is the only member of the European Union that does not permit divorce and only one of two nations in the world.

National Catholic Reporter: Kiec’s resignation comes in the wake of a report from the Office of Inspector General that claimed Kmiec was spending too much time on writings and speeches unrelated to bilateral relations

AP: “A key Catholic supporter of President Barack Obama complained Friday that a government audit criticizing his work as the U.S. ambassador to Malta reflects some State Department officials’ hostility toward expressions of his religious faith. The report by the department’s inspector general rebuked Douglas Kmiec for spending too much time writing and speaking about subjects such as abortion and his religious beliefs . . . ”

Times of Malta: “The Professionals Against Embryo Freezing – as the group is called – said today that it was disappointed by the recommendations of a parliamentary committee, which, it said, was calling for the setting up of a national embryo freezing service. ”

Times of Malta: “Nationalist MP Jean Pierre Farrugia’s statement that he would be allocating part of his MP salary rise towards fiscal incentives to encourage couples to implant or adopt frozen human embryos left over after IVF treatment is being strongly objected to by the Gift of Life Foundation.”

Danna Harman writing in The Huffington Post: “In Malta, divorce is illegal . . . For the vast majority of those separating Maltese couples, for whom neither an annulment or a foreign divorce is an option, the solution is to avoid the extra headache, heartache and expense and simply separate unofficially. Meaning, people move on with their lives: Leaving the family home, co-habitating with new partners, having new families, and yet all the while still married to their original partner.”

Times of Malta: “The Attorney General has filed an appeal from a court sentence which had granted Joanne Cassar the right to marry a man after her gender reassignment surgery.”

Times of Malta: “Malta’s strict anti-abortion laws will not be affected by the recent judgment of Europe’s supreme court relating to abortion in Ireland, according to a Maltese judge who sat on the case.”

Times of Malta: “Labour MP Evarist Bartolo is to present a Private Member’s Bill that would make it easier for trans-gender people to change the gender annotation on their official documents, without having to undergo a lengthy and intrusive court process.”

Times of Malta: “Teaching students about contraception encourages them to give in to the ‘culture of pleasure’ and is tantamount to abuse, according to Gozo Bishop Mario Grech.”

Times of Malta: “All those who ‘cooperate’ in the introduction of divorce, including judges who apply the law, would be ‘committing a grave sin’, according to the head of the Church tribunals.” | Via Religion Clause.

Malta Independent: “As Members of the European Parliament called for more rights for same-sex couples in Europe, gay rights activist Patrick Attard is uncertain about the proposed cohabitation law, which Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said will be enacted by the end of the year. On Tuesday night, MEPs discussed discrimination against same-sex married couples or those in civil partnerships, mutual recognition of marriages and civil partnerships by same-sex couples, as well as discrimination against same-sex couples and freedom of movement.”

Times of Malta: “A 24-year-old judgment by the European Court of Human Rights may dampen lawyer Lynn Zahra’s hopes of getting the Strasbourg court to ‘force’ Malta to introduce divorce since it was not deemed to be a human right.”

Associated Press: “A European ruling banning crucifixes in Italian schools should be overturned, nine European governments said in an appeal Wednesday. … The decisions of the court — an arm of the Council of Europe, the continent’s premier human rights watchdog — are binding on the council’s 47 member states and therefore have an impact far beyond Italy.”

24 Masti: “European Ombudsman has registered Hindus’ complaint about equality of religions in Malta and has assigned a registration number to it.”

Amnesty International: “Amnesty International has expressed great disappointment at the Nicaragua government’s decision to reject the recommendations made by 12 States urging a change to the country’s law imposing a total ban on abortion . . . Currently only four countries in the world have a complete ban on abortion: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Malta.” | More from the European Life Network’s Pat Buckley and SPUC director John Smeaton.

Times of Malta: “What happens in the bedroom is, up to a point, the government’s business, because it often had to solve problems caused there, the chairman of the House Social Affairs Committee, Edwin Vassallo said . . . One of the major topics was the issue of homosexual couples and children. Even though Malta did not allow adoption by gay couples, Ms Calleja said ‘we’re creative and still find a way to have children’. These methods included surrogacy, artificial insemination and IVF and also intercourse with a member of the opposite sex.”

European Center for Law and Justice: “For the first time in the record of the ECHR, ten member States are simultaneously intervening as ‘third party’ in one single case. The case at stake is the Lautsi case – also known as the ‘crucifix case’ – which will go before the Grand Chamber of the ECHR on June 30th. The Court has communicated to the ECLJ the list of the following Member States: Armenia; Bulgaria; Cyprus; Greece; Lithuania; Malta; Monaco; San-Marino; Romania; The Russian Federation.”

Malta Today: “[A]ccording to the Rainbow Europe Country index, a report compiled by the International Gay and Lesbian Organisation, Malta scored the barest minimum possible (one point out of a maximum 10) for legislation protecting LGBT persons . . . [The issues] are: equality; the provision of goods and services; legislation to allow transsexual people to marry; identity issues concerning transgender individuals; recognition of same-sex unions; reproductive rights, and finally; adoption.”

Times of Malta: “Cohabiting couples should not receive Holy Communion, the Bishops of Malta and Gozo said in a joint statement today . . .”

Malta Today: “The Nationalist Party’s executive committee yesterday elected the first openly gay MP to Parliament to replace Michael Frendo, who was appointed Speaker to replace Louis Galea, who in turn took up a post with the European Court of Auditors.”

Times of Malta: “The Maltese government has asked to intervene in the hearings of the European Court of Human Rights which is considering an appeal filed by Italy against a decision to remove crucifixes from public places.”

Times of Malta: “The Opposition has called on the government to set up a committee – already provided for in the Criminal Code – to advise the minister responsible for culture on definitions of obscenities and pornography.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Section 163 of Malta’s Criminal Code outlaws publicly vilifying the Roman Catholic Apostolic religion (the country’s official religion), or those connected with it. The Police v. Rokku Abdilla, (Ct. Cr. App., Oct. 23, 2009), a decision handed down last week by Malta’s Court of Criminal Appeal, interprets this provision.”

Times of Malta: “All five Maltese MEPs have voted in favour of an amendment to the 2010 draft EU budget which called for the banning of overseas development funds to countries or organisations supporting human rights abuses such as coercive abortion.”

Times of Malta: “MGRM activists yesterday greeted parliamentarians returning to the House after the summer recess with an appeal to discuss same-sex marriage, also handing out copies of a speech by left-wing Spanish Prime Minister Josè Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.”

Life News: “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday approved the nomination of a pro-Obama political activists who has caused headaches for the pro-life Catholic community . . .”

Times of Malta: “The Swedish Liberal MP who is campaigning to harmonise EU legislation on abortion has admitted that the practice ‘cannot be imposed on Malta.’”

C-FAM reports: “Late night negotiations carried on in Geneva as delegations continued to battle it out over the ‘reproductive rights’ language in the draft text. While the US delegation remained quiet on the reproductive health provisions, the EU remained divided as Poland, Malta and Ireland continued opposing the controversial language despite pressure from their colleagues.”

Malta Independent Online: “The doctor is expected to clearly lay out the options and either refer the couple for clinical ethics counselling, or to counsel them herself, even about the social and religious issues, as required by the biopsychosocial paradigm with which primary health care doctors work today. The couple is then able to make an ethical decision based on an informed process. Indeed it would be negligent on the part of health care professionals not to discuss seriously the social and cultural issues at hand.”

Bonnici told the Times of Malta that the Council of Europe is not like the European Union and doesn’t have binding laws and that Malta would retain its abortion limits.

“The governments of Poland and Malta broke ranks with the European Union on the question of abortion this week.”

Gemma Pritchard reports at Pink News: A gay rights group in Malta on Monday presented a petition to the country’s ruling party asking for formal recognition of the rights of same sex couples. It also requested the inclusion of an …