NATO’s New Libya: Rebels cage black Africans in zoo, force feed them flags
RTMarch 2, 2012
A shocking video has appeared on the Internet showing Libyan rebels torturing a group of black Africans. People with their hands bound are shown being locked in a zoo-like cage and allegedly forced to eat the old Libyan flag.
“Eat the flag, you dog. Patience you dog, patience. God is Great,” screams a voice off-camera in the video uploaded to YouTube last week, which also made its way onto LiveLeak.com.
The torturers are also shown making the group of captive black Africans stand up with pieces of green cloth still in their mouths and apparently forcing them start jumping.
A number of people are shown standing outside the cage watching the atrocity.
After Muammar Gaddafi was killed, hundreds of migrant workers from neighboring states were imprisoned by fighters allied to the new interim authorities.
They accuse the black Africans of having been mercenaries for the late ruler.
In the course of the fighting to topple Gaddafi last year, sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees “became targets of stigma, discrimination and violence,” the human rights group Amnesty International said last month.
“At the beginning of the crisis, there was vastly exaggerated propaganda for which the highest level of the National Transitional Council should take some responsibility because they largely contributed to that unfounded propaganda,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s senior crisis response advisor.
Some of the black migrants managed to flee into neighboring Mali and Niger, but more than 5,000 were detained. They face mass execution, beatings, and revenge killings, according to an Al Jazeera report published back in September.
Before the Libyan uprising broke out, the country hosted about a million black African workers, many of them employed in domestic work, construction, trash collection and other low-wage jobs.
Human Rights Investigations (HRI) suspect Libyan rebels of ethnic cleansing of the black population of the country, particularly in the city of Tawergha.
and...
Benghazi protesters demand justice be restored
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - Hundreds of Libyans protested outside the main courthouse in Benghazi on Friday, demanding that a militia which had occupied the building during the revolution leave and allow judges to return to work.
The militia, one of dozens set up during the 2011 uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi, has been using the courthouse as its headquarters and wants it to remain a symbol of the revolt that began in the eastern coastal city.
Libyans, tired of lawlessness and keen to see the justice system back up and running, have been demanding in vain that militias lay down their arms and the rule of law be restored.
"We are with the judiciary and with the court. We want the court back and we don't want the judiciary to be marginalised," said Ghalia Bouzaakouk, one of the protesters.
Since Gaddafi's overthrow last year, the National Transitional Council has struggled to impose its authority over the country. The militias set up to fight Gaddafi's forces have largely refused to disarm and join a national security force and the proper rule of law has yet to be established.
Former rebels hold thousands of detainees and the NTC has struggled to have them transferred to state custody from where they could be put on trial.
A group of about a dozen men armed with knives, who protesters believe were hired by the militia, tried to disperse the crowd that gathered in the square outside the courthouse, a focal point of protests during the revolution.
"Attacks against protesters are a crime in every sense of the word. These are definitely hired thugs," said Saad al-Mgasbi, an employee in the attorney general's office.
"What does it mean for them to occupy the court? From my perspective it is standing in the way of the revolution."
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