Malta Labour MEPs Wear Red for Gaza: How a Strasbourg Scarf Became a Mediterranean Cry

Red Scarves in Strasbourg: How Malta’s Labour MEPs Turned Gaza Solidarity into a Mediterranean Moment

By the time European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stepped up to the Strasbourg rostrum on Wednesday morning, the hemicycle was already a sea of crimson. But three seats in particular caught the eye of Maltese photographers: the ones occupied by Malta’s Labour MEPs Alex Agius Saliba, Josianne Cutajar and Cyrus Engerer, each wearing the same vermilion scarf that Palestinian fishermen once used to patch their sails. In the hush before the annual State of the Union address, the scarves spoke louder than any speech.

The gesture—organised by the Socialists & Democrats group—was meant as a 60-second silent statement: red for the blood spilled, red for the cross on Gaza’s flag, red for the tomatoes that no longer leave the strip’s once-fertile fields. Yet for Maltese watching the livestream on their lunch break, the colour carried an extra layer of memory. It evoked the crimson bunting that drapes village feasts, the velvet kneelers in our baroque churches, the scarlet tunics of the Malta Philharmonic when it plays Verdi on Republic night. In short, it felt like something we already knew in our bones.

Alex Agius Saliba, the youngest Maltese MEP, later told Hot Malta that the idea came to him while scrolling through footage of a bombed-out pharmacy in Rafah. “I saw a child’s antibiotic box with a Maltese cross stamped on it—our same cross,” he said over Zoom from his Strasbourg office. “That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking: if our islands could survive the Great Siege, surely we can spare a thought for another besieged shore.”

The scarves were hand-sewn by volunteers at the Għaqda Ħbieb il-Filastin, a Palermo-born, Valletta-based NGO that meets every Tuesday in the old Civil Abattoir canteen. Former fireworks-maker Graziella Vella, 68, pressed the final hem on 27 scarves—one for each EU Socialist MEP—using the same Singer treadle her mother once deployed to stitch carnival costumes. “Red thread is red thread,” Graziella shrugs. “Whether it’s for a prince’s cloak or a fisherman’s patch, the needle doesn’t discriminate.”

Back home, the reaction was instant. By 2 p.m. the Facebook group “Malta Loves Gaza” had changed its cover photo to a still of the three MEPs, superimposed with the Maltese proverb “Minn ġo fħal ma jridx ħalba” (He who is already drowning needs no bucket). Within four hours, 2,300 people had shared the image. A junior college student in Msida started a fundraiser selling €5 wristbands in the same shade; by sunset she had collected €4,700—enough to send two pallets of pediatric electrolytes through the Red Crescent.

Not everyone applauded. Nationalist MEP David Casa, who wore a lapel pin of the Israeli flag, called the scarf protest “simplistic theatre that ignores Hamas atrocities.” But even critics conceded the colour choice was canny. “Red is politically ambiguous,” notes University of Malta sociologist Dr. Maria Grech Ganado. “It can signal leftist solidarity, Catholic martyrdom, or simply the blood of civilians—allowing viewers to project their own narrative.”

By evening, the scarves had migrated from Strasbourg to Strait Street. In a pop-up exhibition at Valletta’s old Embassy cinema, artist Vince Briffa projected looping footage of the MEPs onto a rust-red fishing net salvaged from Marsaxlokk, while DJ Ma’luf remixed the adhan into a slow techno heartbeat. Visitors were invited to tie scraps of scarlet fabric onto the net; by 9 p.m. it looked like a giant rosary washed up by a storm.

Whether the protest will shift EU policy remains to be seen. But in Malta, at least, it has already accomplished something subtler: a re-colouring of our collective imagination. When the village band marches through Żejtun this weekend, the red banners will carry an extra echo—not just of saints and siege, but of a distant Mediterranean shore where tomatoes rot in trucks and children learn the alphabet from the sound of drones. And for a brief moment, the same shade will bind feasts and funerals, fishermen and politicians, fireworks-makers and pharmacists into one trembling, hopeful thread.