Exclusive: Video Clips Offer Another Perspective on the KFC Incident in St Julian’s

The disorder surrounding the Freedom Street dancehall festival in Malta has received extensive coverage. During the festival, held from 11 to 13 September 2026, footage showed crowds pushing past barriers at the UNO after-party venue in Ta’ Qali. UNO’s Friday event was stopped, and further after-parties were cancelled amid safety and crowd-control concerns. Times of Malta⁠, MaltaToday⁠

Videos from a KFC outlet in St Julian’s then attracted attention. KFC’s general manager said a large crowd entered the restaurant in the early hours of Saturday morning. Some customers, frustrated by the wait, went behind the counter and took food. Such conduct cannot be excused, and the staff should never have been put in that position. Times of Malta⁠, MaltaToday⁠

Yet the videos circulating online do not tell us what every person in the restaurant was doing. Footage received by this site appears to show some customers helping to pass prepared orders to others while KFC staff continued cooking. Other people can be seen entering the staff area. From those clips alone, I cannot tell who had paid, who was collecting an order, or who took food without paying.

There is also a dispute about exactly how people entered the area behind the counter. KFC’s general manager says some climbed over it. The footage this site received appears to show people using an open passage. Both accounts may describe different people or different moments. Fuller footage, together with the police investigation, would help establish what happened.

The incident deserves scrutiny. So does the way it is discussed. Conduct at KFC should be judged on the evidence concerning the individuals involved, rather than turned into a claim about migrants or people of a particular background. I have criticised migration policies before, but that does not oblige me to treat every alarming video as proof of an argument against migration. In this case, the responsible course is to identify wrongdoing accurately while acknowledging what the available footage cannot establish.