Malta must honour Daphne's life and memory with full justice and meaningful reform

Eight years after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, we remember her life and work with a renewed commitment to see that full justice is served for her killing. Those who ordered and carried out her murder must be held fully accountable and serve sentences commensurate with the crime of executing a journalist to silence her.

Justice for Daphne also means dismantling the systems of abuse she spent her life exposing and which made her murder possible. It means building a country where journalists do not work under threat, where truth is not punished with violence, and where the powerful are held to account and are not protected by the institutions meant to restrain them.

We recall that the 2021 public inquiry into Daphne’s assassination found the Maltese State responsible for her death because it failed to protect her despite the clear and immediate risks to her life. That inquiry gave Malta a historic chance: to be remembered not only for the bomb that killed a journalist in broad daylight, but for how the country responded—by confronting the culture of impunity that made her murder possible. More than four years later, Malta has not yet fulfilled that obligation.

Daphne cannot be brought back. But Malta can still honour her ultimate sacrifice and her memory—by delivering full justice for her murder, by rooting out the corruption she exposed, and by creating a future where the press can fulfil its democratic function and no journalist is ever targeted for doing their job.