Manwel Dimich - Valletta, Malta - Civil Rights Memorials on Waymarking.com

life size statue of Manwel Dimich stands on a bronze plinth on a two tiered 5' high by 3' square stone base. Dimich is depicted wearing a suit with a vest. He is walking briskly with his right foot in front of his left. His tie is being blown back towards his right side. His left arm is held high over his head and he is clutching a roll of papers in his left hand. His right arm is down by his side and he is holding the brim of his fedora hat in his right hand.

The sides of the base depict relief vignettes of events in his life - teaching and being sent into exile. The front of the base is inscribed:

LIL
MANWEL DIMICH
1860 - 1921
L EWWEL GHALLIEM U
MARTRI SOCJALISTA
IL-HADDIEMA MALTIN
JAGHTU HAJR

TO
MANWEL DIMICH
1860 - 1921
THE FIRST TEACHER AND
SOCIALIST MARTYR
THE MALTESE WORKERS
TAKE ACKNOWLEDGMENT

An aluminium plaque provides his biography in four languages. The English version is inscribed:

MANWEL DIMICH (1860 - 1921)

Born in extreme poverty, Dimich spent years
in prison but emerged a philosopher, author,
teacher of languages and outstanding social
reformer. He published The Flag of the
Maltese and set up the The Society of the
Enlightened to educate and make Malta a
modern State. He was excommunicated by
the Catholic Church in Malta, was persecuted,
arrested and finally exiled to Egypt by the
British, where he died alone in 1921.
Inaugurated in 1976 the monument is the
artistic work of Anton Agius.

Wikipedia statement on the contribution of Manwel Dimich to the emancipation of the working class people of Malta. Link to Wikipedia article

"Dimech evocatively and compellingly advocated the emancipation of the masses. His assault on the entrenched structures of oppression in Malta was extraordinary, outstanding and unmatched by anything that had gone before. Dimech was not a nationalist, an anti-colonialist or a socialist in any way we would understand the terms today. He was, first and foremost, an enemy of any kind of domination, coercion, cruelty, tyranny, repression and subjugation. If this made him a nationalist, an anti-colonialist or some kind of socialist, it was surely only in an indirect and oblique way. Dimech did not achieve in his lifetime what he set out to accomplish. He was violently and unjustly truncated. Most of the policies he advocated were implemented some half a century after his death by Dom Mintoff in the 1970s".

Dom Mintoff was the former Prime Minister of Malta both under colonial rule and after Malta achieved independence from the United Kingdom.

Works of Manwel Dimich published during his life:

Establish the newspaper The Flag of the Maltese (1898)
Il Chelliem Inglis, an English grammar book (1892)
La Guerra (The Struggle) (1898)
Ivan u Prascovia, political novel (1904)
Un Nuovo Dio (A New God; nom de plume: Eusebio degli Allori) (1904)
Il Chelliem tal Erbat Ilsna (The Speaker of Four Languages) 1907
Organizes the The Society of the Enlightened (1911)
I Suicidi (The Suiciders) (1911)
Is Sisien tax Xirca Maltïa, book of rules (1914)
Aphorisms, Wisdom of a Philosopher in Exile (1917 - 1920)

In 2014 Dimech’s Lost Prison Poems and Dimech Poeta (Dimech the Poet) were published posthumously.