Racist violence in Libya

This video is about racist Libyan rebels beheading a black man.

By Peter Symonds:

NATO-backed Libyan regime persecutes black Africans

9 September 2011

The widespread racist persecution of immigrant African workers and black Libyans by forces opposed to Libyan ruler Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is a damning indictment of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) and its Western backers.

The US and its European allies launched their neo-colonial war against the Gaddafi regime on the pretext of protecting civilians and have hailed their new client regime as the beginning of a new era of democracy in Libya. Mass racist reprisals in NTC-held areas are yet another devastating exposure of these tattered lies. As well as killing and maiming civilians through its relentless bombing, NATO bears responsibility for the arbitrary arrest, physical abuse or extra-judicial killings of thousands of black Africans by its NTC proxies.

US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for an end to the systematic detention of black Africans accused of fighting as Gaddafi’s mercenaries. HRW regional director Sarah Leah Whitson stated: “It’s a dangerous time to be dark-skinned in Tripoli. The NTC should stop arresting African migrants and black Libyans unless it has concrete evidence of criminal activity. It should also take concrete steps to protect them from violence and abuse.”

Prior to the outbreak of war, there were between 1 and 2 million African migrants in Libya. The overwhelming majority were not mercenaries, but worked in menial jobs.

HRW officials visited two among scores of makeshift jails throughout Tripoli, where hundreds of mainly black prisoners—young and old—were being held in overcrowded, squalid conditions. In most cases, the only supposed evidence of prisoners’ guilt was their skin colour. Reports indicate that thousands have been arbitrarily detained throughout Tripoli.

In recent weeks, the US-backed military junta in Egypt has increased its support for Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), which is taking over power in Libya thanks to an intense NATO bombing campaign. The close collaboration between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the NTC is part of a US-led counterrevolutionary offensive in the region, aiming to disorient the working class uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and to intensify imperialist exploitation of the region: here.

John Pilger, Truthout: “This is Rupert’s Revolution, after all. Gone from the Murdoch press are pejorative ‘insurgents.’ The action in Libya, says The Times, is ‘a revolution … as revolutions used to be.’ That it is a coup by a gang of Muammar Qaddafi’s ex cronies and spooks in collusion with NATO is hardly news. The self-appointed ‘rebel leader,’ Mustafa Abdul Jalil, was Qaddafi’s feared justice minister. The CIA runs or bankrolls most of the rest, including America’s old friends, the Mujadeen Islamists who spawned al-Qaeda”: here.