Re: Civil War in Libya
Interesting, as there is no solid evidence of what happened there, who ordered it, or even who those people were. Considering that the rebels have a history of burning real or imaginary loyalists alive and then claiming them as martyrs that were killed by other loyalists for not attacking civilians, I'm not sure how you can make the assertion that it was a Gaddafi ordered massacre with any degree of certianty.Originally Posted by Viking
That depends. Simply telling a group of people to move somewhere else is not genocide. Reprisals, violence, torture, killings, forced separations, and imposing restrictions based on ethnicity and in an effort to destroy said ethnicity is genocide according to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
Amnesty International reports:Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
And, to requote what I posted earlier:Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) must do more to protect black Libyans, Amnesty International said today, after allegations that members of the Tawargha tribe were detained, threatened and beaten on suspicion of fighting for Gaddafi forces.
Some Tawarghas who’ve been detained in Tripoli are said to have been made to kneel facing the wall and then been beaten with sticks and whips. Others have simply vanished after being arrested at checkpoints or taken from hospitals by armed revolutionaries (thuwwar).
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Most residents of the Tawargha region, about 25 miles from Misratah, fled their homes last month before the arrival of the thuwwar. Tens of thousands are now living in different parts of Libya - unable to return home as relations between the people of Misratah and Tawargha remain particularly tense. Residents of makeshift camps near Tripoli, where displaced people from Tawargha are sheltering, told Amnesty they would not go outside for fear of arrest. They told how relatives and others from the Tawargha tribe had been arrested from checkpoints and even hospitals in Tripoli.
On 29 August, Amnesty delegates saw a Tawargha patient at the Tripoli Central Hospital being taken by three men, one of them armed, for "questioning in Misratah". The men had no arrest warrant. Amnesty was also told that at least two other Tawargha men had vanished after being taken for questioning from Tripoli hospitals.
One 45-year-old flight dispatcher and his uncle were arrested by armed thuwwar while out shopping in the al-Firnaj area of Tripoli on 28 August. They were taken to the Military Council headquarters at Mitiga Airport just east of the capital. The men told Amnesty they were beaten with the butt of a rifle and received death threats. Both were held for several days in Mitiga and are still detained in Tripoli.
Even in the camps, the Tawarghas are not safe. Towards the end of last month, a group of armed men drove into the camp and arrested about 14 men. Amnesty spoke to some of their relatives; none knew of their fate or whereabouts. Another woman at the camp said her husband has been missing since he left the camp to run an errand in central Tripoli, about a week ago. She fears he might be have been detained.
One woman, who has been living in the camp with her husband and five children for about a week, told Amnesty that she was terrified of going home:
"If we go back to Tawargha, we will then be at the mercy of the Misratah thuwwar.
"When the thuwwar entered our town in mid-Ramadan [mid-August] and shelled it, we fled just carrying the clothes on our backs. I don't know what happened to our homes and belongings. Now I am here in this camp, my son is ill and I am too afraid to go to the hospital in town. I don't know what will happen to us now."
In addition to Tawarghas, other black Libyans including from the central Sabha district as well as sub-Saharan Africans, continue to be at particular risk of reprisals and arbitrary arrests, on the basis of their skin colour and widespread reports that al-Gaddafi forces used "African mercenaries" to repress supporters of the NTC.
The residents were then apparently driven out of a pair of refugee camps in Tripoli over this past weekend.
“The Misrata people are still looking for black people,” said Hassan, a Tawergha resident who’s now sheltering in a third camp in Janzour, six miles east of Tripoli. “One of the men who came to this camp told me my brother was killed yesterday by the revolutionaries.”
The evidence that the rebels’ pursuit of the Tawerghis did not end with the collapse of the Gadhafi regime is visible, both in the emptiness of this village and that of the camps to which the residents fled.
At one, in a Turkish-owned industrial complex in the Salah al Deen neighborhood of southern Tripoli, a man looting metal from the complex simply said that the Tawerghis had “gone to Niger,” the country that borders Libya on the south where some Gadhafi supporters, including the deposed dictator’s son Saadi, have fled.
It is worth noting that to get to Niger, any refugees would hav ehad to make an extremely hazardous journey to Sabha first. From there it would have been a further weeks journey by bus into Niger, across the Sahara: another very dangerous journey which it is highly unlikely any of the refugees would have even attempted let alone survived.
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Lafy Mohammed, whose house is across the road from the complex, said that on Saturday a group of revolutionary militiamen from Misrata, 120 miles east of Tripoli, had come to the camp and evicted its tenants.
“They arrested about 25 of the men,” Mohammed said. “They were shooting in the air and hitting them with their rifle butts.”
“They took the women, old men and children out in trucks,” he said.
Mohammed said that it was not the first time the revolutionaries from Misrata had come after the people in the camp.
“A week ago they were here, but (the people in the neighborhood) begged them to leave them alone,” Mohammed said.
Mohammed said some of the Tawerghis may have been taken to another nearby camp, in a Brazilian-owned industrial complex. On Tuesday, that camp was empty as well, with the gate locked.
Reached by phone at the camp in Janzour, Hassan, who did not want his last name used, said he had escaped from the Brazilian company camp on Saturday, when it, too, was raided. He said about 1,000 Tawerghis were now at the Janzour camp.
“They arrested 35 men, but they let me go because I was with my family,” Hassan said. He blamed a brigade of fighters from Misrata.
In Tawergha, the rebel commander said his men had orders not to allow any of the residents back in. He also said that unexploded ordnance remained in the area, though none was readily apparent.
Most homes and buildings in the area appeared to have been damaged in the fighting, and a half-dozen appeared to have been ransacked. The main road into the village was blocked with earthen berms. Signs marking the way to the village appeared to have been destroyed.
On the only sign remaining “Tawergha” had been painted over with the words “New Misrata.”
On one wall in Tawergha, graffiti referred to the town’s residents as “abeed,” a slur for blacks.
Other reports are no less disturbing:
And:Even black Libyans have experienced such race-based retaliation, most notably with the near-total cleansing of the majority-black town of Tawergha, where some residents fought alongside Gadhafi forces in devastating attacks on the neighboring city of Misrata.
Revolutionary brigades from Misrata continue to carry out collective punishment against the residents of Tawergha, which has been informally renamed "New Misrata."
Anti-Gadhafi fighters are razing homes and seizing properties despite the council's admonitions against such practices, which are designed to prevent the displaced residents from returning to Tawergha. A McClatchy reporter who visited the town noticed racial slurs among graffiti on the walls.
At least one Tawergha resident, Saleh Ahmed Abdullah Haddad, 21, had died in rebel custody after being beaten and trampled by his jailers, the Amnesty International report said.
"According to his cellmates, several days after beatings left him paralyzed from the waist down, he started vomiting blood and he died shortly after being taken to the hospital," the report said.
And finally:Because the color of the Libyan revolution is white. Or at least as fair as the skin of Arabs and Berbers along the Mediterranean coast. Despite Libya’s having a significant black population, no blacks are represented in its current transitional government, and there are no blacks among the economic or cultural elite. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both reported cases of arbitrary arrests, torture, and execution of blacks in detention, not least blacks from Mabruk’s hometown. Tawergha had more than 30,000 inhabitants, but is now ethnically cleansed. The buildings stare vacantly out toward the deserted streets. Corpses of dogs and cats lie next to laundry hung out to dry on the day the inhabitants fled. The National Transitional Council seems to employ classic Gaddafi methods. If this tolerance for revenge remains as pervasive as it is today, Libya’s new leaders have already lost the struggle to obtain a better image than their predecessor.
(Reuters) - After weeks on the run, thousands of black Libyans driven from their homes during the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi have resurfaced across the country, finding refuge in a squalid camp they hope is only temporary.
Once residents of Gaddafi's stronghold of Tawergha, the families now wander a dusty compound ringed with garbage and staffed by a handful of volunteers from the city of Benghazi struggling to prevent the spread of disease as numbers swell.
The group's eastward flight began last summer, when anti-Gaddafi forces overran Tawergha and vengeance-seeking crowds ransacked it, leaving a ghost town behind.
"They chased us with guns and knives," said Ibrahim Med Khaled, a 24-year-old taxi driver recently arrived at the former construction site after spending weeks dodging hostile crowds across the country's west before being captured by armed men.
"They brought me to a house and beat me with electrical cable to make me confess I worked for Gaddafi, even though I told them I never carried a gun," he said, lifting his shirt to reveal shoulders criss-crossed with fresh wounds from flogging.
Throughout the uprising against Gaddafi's 42-year rule, his opponents have accused him of hiring fighters from neighboring African countries which led to reports of mistreatment of blacks, including Libyans.
The camp has grown since opening from 400 to nearly 3,000 people in just two weeks, despite disrepair and lack of sufficient sanitation and electricity evidenced by raw sewage pooling behind some of the housing blocks.
Aid workers say overcrowding is forcing hundreds to set up makeshift settlements near by.
Some of the men at the camp, guarded by troops loyal to the interim government which ousted Gaddafi, still wear camouflage trousers they may have donned last summer in support of Gaddafi.
One little girl could be seen eating spilled food off the ground.
Now, none of this would be considered genocide unless it was clearly aimed at destroying the Tawergha as a people.
On that, we have the new Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril quoted as saying:
The rebel commanders in the area were even more direct:"Regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misrata.”
“This matter can’t be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe,” he added as the crowd cheered with chants of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is greatest.”
Now, rebels have been torching homes in the abandoned city 25 miles to the south. Since Thursday, The Wall Street Journal has witnessed the burning of more than a dozen homes in the city Col. Gadhafi once lavished with money and investment. On the gates of many vandalized homes in the country’s only coastal city dominated by dark-skinned people, light-skinned rebels scrawled the words “slaves” and “negroes.”
“We are setting it on fire to prevent anyone from living here again,” said one rebel fighter as flames engulfed several loyalist homes.
And further:Nearly four-fifths of residents of Misrata’s Ghoushi neighborhood were Tawergha natives. Now they are gone or in hiding, fearing revenge attacks by Misratans, amid reports of bounties for their capture.
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Ibrahim al-Halbous, a rebel commander leading the fight near Tawergha, says all remaining residents should leave once if his fighters capture the town. "They should pack up," Mr. Halbous said. "Tawergha no longer exists, only Misrata."
Other rebel leaders are also calling for drastic measures like banning Tawergha natives from ever working, living or sending their children to schools in Misrata.
Now, does this constitute genocide? I don't know. Does it resemble genocide? A little bit, yeah. Ethnic cleansing certainly, but genocide is a tougher hurdle to jump. I suppose it would depend on whether all the killing, torture, reprisals, detentions, separations, and destruction is simply an effort to 'punish' the Tawergha or more directly aimed at 'thinning' their numbers and destroying their ethnic cohesion as to eliminate a possible future enemy of the revolution. It is certainly not a Holocaust-type industrial event, but it does in some ways resemble the Armenian genocide, where much of the killing was done by driving people out of their homes and exposing them to the elements with no supplies. We'll see if the Tawergha continue to languish in disease-ridden concentration camps in post-war Libya, or if efforts will be made to remedy the neglect and abuse - especially in comparison to other light skinned Arab communities that were also perceived to have been loyal to the Colonel.Regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misrata," said Mahmoud Jibril, the NTC's prime minister and one of the chief interlocutors with U.S. and European leaders, during Monday's town hall meeting. "This matter can't be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe," he added as the crowd cheered with chants of "Allahu Akbar," or "God is greatest."
Rebel leaders in Misrata appear to have already decided how to punish Tawergha's people, whom rebels accuse of pillaging homes and raping women during an assault on Misrata in March. Though the rape allegations have been difficult to prove, they have fueled immense hatred.
Now, rebels have been torching homes in the abandoned city 25 miles to the south. Since Thursday, The Wall Street Journal has witnessed the burning of more than a dozen homes in the city Col. Gadhafi once lavished with money and investment. On the gates of many vandalized homes in the country's only coastal city dominated by dark-skinned people, light-skinned rebels scrawled the words "slaves" and "negroes."
"We are setting it on fire to prevent anyone from living here again," said one rebel fighter as flames engulfed several loyalist homes.
Every house, shop, school and public building in Tawergha has been ransacked since the Misrata rebels chased out pro-Gadhafi soldiers. At the time, hundreds of families also fled, fearing reprisals. Rebels slaughtered some of the livestock left behind, the carcasses of which are still rotting in the yards of abandoned homes.
Misrata's rebels are also preventing Tawergha residents from coming back and have tracked down and arrested dozens of male Tawergha natives taking refuge in Tripoli, bringing them back to Misrata from the capital for detention and interrogation.
"The revolution was supposed to give people their rights, not to oppress them," said Hussein Muftah, a Tawergha elder who fled to Tripoli last month, referring to the Feb. 17 uprising.
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Tawergha's fate could be an ominous portent of what is to come.
About two years ago, Col. Gadhafi made the impoverished rural community a personal pet project, residents said. He lavished investment and money on the town of some 20,000. Empowering weaker and poorer tribes and regions was one of Col. Gadhafi's favorite ruling devices to counter the influence of the country's traditional power centers.
His attention gave a much-needed boost to Tawergha's economy, which depends on dusty farmland and providing cheap labor to wealthier, more fair skinned and cosmopolitan neighbors in Misrata.
When the uprising erupted on Feb. 17, Misrata was one of the cities that waged the fiercest struggle against Col. Gadhafi. Neighboring Tawergha, Bani Walid and Zlitin were transformed into garrison towns for Col. Gadhafi's forces as they waged a brutal monthslong siege of the city that included near-constant barrages of rocket and artillery fire.
As the rebels gained momentum toward the end of summer, Misrata's rebels attacked Tawergha in early August. Residents and pro-regime soldiers fled.
On the Misrata-Sirte highway, Misratan rebels have scratched out signs pointing toward Tawergha and written "New Misrata" in its place. Many Misrata residents seem more willing to reconcile with loyalists in predominantly lighter-skinned towns like Bani Walid and Zlitin, but not Tawergha. Misrata's military council has declared Tawergha a closed military zone. The city's leaders have decreed that its residents won't be allowed back.
"Tawergha is no more," said a senior Misratan rebel leader, Mohammed Ben Ras Ali.
NTC officials have tiptoed around the issue. Misratans' scrappy fight against Col. Gadhafi's forces earned them an iconic status in the rebel effort and any rebel leader speaking out against them now would likely pay a steep political price. There is also a broad perception that the city, which arguably suffered more than any other Libyan city, is somewhat justified in taking such extreme measures against Tawergha.
Misratans' pursuit of their neighbors has followed the city's scattered residents to hospitals and refugee camps in Tripoli. On Saturday, Misratan rebels allegedly dragged off 65 Tawerghan residents from refugee camps and hospital beds in the capital, according to Tawergha leaders.
In any event, there indeed seems to be a concerted effort by rebel military leadership that has been tacitly endorsed by the political leadership to destroy the Tawergha tribe. This goes beyond simple displacement as they have been ceaselessly tracked down, thrown in concentration camps scattered around the nation, and relentlessly abused in those camps.
My point, though, was to demonstrate just how ridiculous the Hussein and 'mass extermination' comments were. As I said: 'The only thing resembling his [Hussein's] actions in the Libyan war so far has been on the rebel side towards the black population.'
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