LIBYA:THE UGLY FACE OF THE 'REVOLUTION'

                      BY: Ba Karang

“According to a report in The Guardian, some Libyan rebels seem to regard the war against Gadhafi as tantamount to a battle against black people. In the town of Misurata, where brutal fighting has taken place, a rebel painted a slogan of a wall which praised "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin.”  (International Business Times,2.09.2011)                            

 The  fact that Black African migrants and Libya`s black population have become a direct target in this  civil war  surprised only those who have no idea of the deep seated Arab racism against Black Africans. What surprises all  is the magnitude of  the brutality and barbarism.

The Nato-led Civil war led to the vilification of the black race; as if the Libyan society was the hostage of the Black African all through out the 42 years of  the rule of Mumar  Gaddafi.

The warning signs were there from the beginning of the conflict.                               

According to UNHCR's Andrew Purvis on the Tunisia-Libya border, March 15, 2011“The discrimination against blacks in Libya that helped propel much of the current exodus is shocking. In buses, it is not uncommon for Libyans of lighter skin to roll down the windows as an African is boarding to "air" the place out as a kind of joke. Sub-Saharan Africans and Libyans of darker complexion are overcharged at stores, I am told. In the street, they are routinely referred to by the Arabic word for slave, abid. Gangs continue to roam the streets targeting blacks, stealing what they have, beating any who resist. For a proud people who came to Libya to find money to support their families back home, it is a deep humiliation. 

 

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When state media announced several weeks ago that black Africans were being hired as mercenaries in Gaddafi's forces, the entire community knew that latent racism was in danger of becoming a pogrom, so most went into hiding or fled for the border. And while several hundred thousand have left, at least 800,000 foreigners are still inside the country.”

[http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/libya-crisis-diary                

http://www.indypendent.org/2011/04/11/answering-questions-on-libya/

According to Aljazeera,

“A mass grave was recently discovered in Tripoli, and some suspect it holds the bodies of black migrant workers mistaken for mercenaries. “   Aljazeera Streams #Libya. New #mass grave found in #Tripoli on 11 June Highway. http://t.co/ri6jzEC

But, even if the civil war in Libya, is correctly referred to as a mass revolutionary movement, we must ask, as with any revolutionary movement, WHAT ARE IT'S GOALS. How free, for example, can be a fundamentalist Islamist state based on Sharia Law? I will have no hesitation in distancing my self from this movement, and continue to criticise it, as I am doing right now, to expose its  reactionary and barbaric nature for the records of history than bath in the romanticism of “revolutionary rhetoric.”  That is a responsibility I will proudly take on.     

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According to the International Business Times, February 9 2011:

“A Nigerian worker in a camp for displaced Africans near Tripoli told Reuters: "A group of men broke through my door and asked for the money. I handed it over, and in a few seconds I lost everything I had worked for seven years. My brother didn't give them his money. They told me to move out of the way, and they made him lie down. Then they shot him in the head.”

An army of a mass revolutionary movement  is far more disciplined than this. It will be defending the people and not executing them. Also, I would argue, Nato fighting side by side with the rebels should be proof enough that we are not dealing with a mass revolutionary    movement, but a civil war -- unless we dispute the fact that the objectives of a mass revolutionary movement is very much opposite to that of  a military alliance like Nato,  and unless we forget that, one of its members that started the dropping of the bombs on Libya, was some few weeks before offering Ben Ali of Tunisia help to crush the Tunisian revolution.

According to Aljazeera.net:

“By some estimates, more than 5,000 black migrants have been detained in makeshift jails around the country, and others have faced beatings, revenge killings, and even mass execution. Mercenary fighters found armed have been summarily executed, according to reports…” 

 

           

A LIBYAN “REVOLUTIONARY” and his black African captives

The barbaric character of the new order in Libya is far from that of  a mass revolutionary movement that  has as its objective  the total liberation of the people and the building of a new society that has its foundation in the aspiration of the mass for a free and democratic society for a dignified and proud people. But  we know, that according to Aljazeera,

 “……… since Gaddafi's government was ousted from power, entire communities of black Libyans have disappeared without a clear reason, leaving virtual ghost towns behind.” Aljazeera. net

Right after the fall  of Benghazi, the propaganda war began in full, with the help of the mass media and other social medias. Arabs in Libya began accusing Black Africans of going around raping and killing Libyans in their homes as part of a call for a wide  Libyan resistance . In Rwanda, such war propaganda was called incitement to Genocide; it resulted in the killing of 10 of thousands people in that country. In Libya, it helped release the deep seated Arab racism,  resulting in the  murder, torture and illegal detention of black Africans. If this could not be taken to be an incitement to genocide, it might only be because it  is political. Both the ICC and other human rights organizations treated the issue as footnotes. And since the media, which knew much of this from the start, choose to keep quite, until recently, non of the human rights organizations or even the ICC are  heard talking about it. Even were as they all went quite, the voices of the victims still remain with us. Again, as Aljazeera reported:

“Black women in refugee camps reported night-time kidnappings and rapes by fighters though to be associated with the NTC. Officials with the National Transitional Council deny such reports. “        (Aljazeera.net)

But what  is more hypocritical  than the son of  a back African migrant, Barak Husein Obama, standing tall in the USA, calling these murderers heroes and freedom fighters. No doubt, the African Union with all its woes got this one right. Because they know that the outrage against Black Africans, was nothing other than racism.

To give one more example, from the Independent newspaper, UK, 30 August 2011

“……One of the militiamen, who have been in control of the police station since the police fled, said simply: "Libyan people don't like people with dark skins, though some of them may be innocent." 

If the international community, their Nato allies and other supporters do not  hold the leadership of Libya responsible for the atrocities committed against black Africans,  Black Africans will. Any one who doubts the fact that these atrocities amount to war crimes has a narrative that has the intention of blackmailing history.

    ( TO Be published in the next coming issue of A_Links )