Migrants in Libya: ‘They don’t treat us like humans’

Across Libya, 'irregular migrants' are detained in poor conditions where they face torture and other ill-treatment.

Πηγή: Amnesty International
By Diana Eltahawy
Sept 18 2012

“They [Libyans] don’t treat us like humans. For them, we are animals or slaves”, 23-year-old Nigerian woman detained in Khoms detention centre for “irregular migrants”.

On the evening of 12 September, a dispute between Eritrean and Nigerian detainees at the Khoms detention centre for “irregular migrants” had escalated into violence. During the chaos a group of Somalis chose their moment to escape.

The nine guards on duty were overwhelmed and they called in reinforcements.

According to detainees, some 10 vehicles with mounted machine guns arrived around 9pm and then men in military uniforms forced all Eritrean detainees into the courtyard for a beating.

A 29-year-old man from the Eritrean capital Asmara, who has spent six months in various detention centres across Libya, told Amnesty International that one man in military uniform hit him on the head with a metal bar and deliberately stepped on his hand with his military boots.

Other Eritreans said they were forced to lie down on the ground and were hit with rifle-butts or metal wires.

The severest beatings were reserved for the recaptured Somali escapees.

Mohamed Abdallah Mohamed, 19, still had visible injuries on his left shoulder, legs and face when I saw him on 14 September after I arrived at the centre having heard reports of shootings.

The Somali said that he was kicked, dragged on the ground, punched in the eye and beaten with the backs of rifles and sticks, after being caught by some seven people.

He was eventually taken to the hospital by detention centre guards, but complained of inadequate health care, continuing severe pain and an inability to see properly from his left eye.

Sixteen-year-old Somali Khadar Mohamed Ali was also recaptured, stepped on, and beaten with sticks and rifle-butts by men in military dress.

Following the escape attempt, a third Somali, Khadar Warsame, 21, ended up at the Intensive Care Unit of Khoms Hospital. He is receiving treatment for a head injury.

In the hospital, the reason for his injury is marked as a “fall”, but an impartial, independent and full investigation needs to be carried out into the violence that engulfed the Khoms detention centre on 12 September to establish the full truth.

Those reasonably suspected of committing acts of torture or other ill-treatment against detainees should be investigated and, where there is sufficient evidence, brought to justice. While their cases are being investigated, they should be suspended from duties where they can carry out similar abuses.

During a previous visit to Khoms, detainees – mainly from Sub-Saharan African countries like Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan – recounted their long list of grievances: overcrowding, inadequate nutrition, no regular access to healthcare, lack of recreational activities and outdoor time, occasional beatings, racism, insults and poor hygiene.

Their top concern remained that they were detained indefinitely and did not know what fate awaited them.

Detention centre guards and administrators also expressed concern about the lack of resources to meet the needs of the some 370 detainees including about 30 women.

They complained about delays in repatriating migrants and the frequent escape attempts.

The detention facility is managed by the Department of Combating Irregular Migration under the Ministry of Interior, but police officers and guards-on-duty rely on local armed groups nominally part of the Libyan army to contain riots and recapture escapees.

Since the toppling of the al-Gaddafi government last year, armed militias have filled the security vacuum left by the collapsed state and assumed a number of law enforcement functions.

The central government has shown itself unable – and at times unwilling – to rein them in. In some instances, the government continues to rely on armed militias to maintain law and order, turning a blind eye to their excesses. Armed militias still detain suspects outside the framework of the law and torture or otherwise abuse them.

This security vacuum, the proliferation of weapons and a judicial system in near paralysis leaves foreign nationals in Libya particularly vulnerable to abuse.

They have nowhere to turn to seek justice and redress. Their situation is unlikely to improve until the Libyan authorities take a number of steps including the ratification of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the introduction of a functioning asylum system and reform of legislation regulating the entry and stay of foreign nationals in Libya.

The Libyan authorities also need to put an end to the violence and other abuses perpetrated against foreign nationals – whether by law enforcement agencies, militias or regular Libyan nationals – and take serious measures to address the prevailing racist and xenophobic attitudes in Libya.

For now, foreign nationals particularly those in an irregular situation remain at the mercy of any Libyan who crosses their path.

If they are lucky, they secure paid work.

Those less fortunate can find themselves forced to work for free, arrested or handed over to a militia, beaten and detained indefinitely in appalling conditions.

An Egyptian national who has lived in Libya for years told Amnesty International about his detention and torture after an argument with his Libyan employer over payment.

He was arrested at his Tripoli home in the middle of the night by three armed men. At their militia’s base, he said he was tied, suspended from a metal bar, and beaten with cables, water pipes and wires all over his body including on the soles of his feet.

He was later handed over to a detention facility for “irregular migrants”. He is hoping that a Libyan acquaintance will come to “sponsor” him and secure his release.

Otherwise, he – like thousands of others – risks indefinite detention and, ultimately, deportation without recourse to appeal.

Cornered in Free Libya: Black Refugees Say "We Are Being Treated Like Dogs"

Πηγή: Alternet
By Karlos Zurutuza

Nov 7 2011

"We’ve walked all the way here to tell everybody that we are being treated like dogs," said 23-year old Hamuda Bubakar, among a couple of hundred black refugees protesting at Martyrs Square in Tripoli. "I’d rather be killed here. I wouldn’t be the first, or the last."

The refugees came to protest early this week from the barracks of Tarik Matar, a makeshift camp on the outskirts of Tripoli. "We’ve already spent more than two months in those horrible barracks," said Aisha who preferred not to give her full name.

A few days back, she said, "guerrilla fighters from Misrata (90 kilometres east of Tripoli) entered our place and took seven young guys with them. We still know nothing about them." Several women at the camp have been abducted and raped in recent weeks, she said.

"Raise your head, you're a free Libyan", the group chanted before a stage set up for the recent celebrations. That’s the very slogan that became almost an anthem for the rebels who rose against Gaddafi.

Tempers flared amid the group of armed soldiers guarding the central square. "I should kill you all for what you did to us in Misrata," shouted a young man in camouflage fatigues. The protesters are from Tawargha, 60 km south of Misrata, that was known as a Gaddafist base.

The armed men at the square, and angry honking soon split up the group.

"Not only do they call us Gaddafists, they hate us for the colour of our skin," said Abdulkarim Rahman. "All blacks in Libya are going through very hard times lately."

Abdurrahman Abudheer, a volunteer worker at one of the barracks that used to house construction workers for new apartment blocks, and that are now home to refugees, estimates there are about 27,000 Tawarghis scattered between Tripoli and Benghazi.

"Just in this camp there are over 200 families, all from Tawargha," said Abudheer. A flashy billboard at the entrance to the camp in the ghostly district Fallah still advertises the "upcoming construction of 1187 houses" by a Turkish company. But now even the grey rows of corrugated iron shacks look more comfortable than those naked and incomplete concrete structures.

The number of refugees is growing by the day, but so is the number of Tripolitanians like Abudheer who show up to help.

Amnesty International expressed concern in September over "increasing cases of violence and indiscriminate arrests against the people from Tawargha." It said tens of thousands of former residents of Tawargha may be living in conditions similar to those in Fallah, or worse.

"Many families arrive after spending days living on the beach," said Abudheer. "Most of them are afraid to even walk down the street."

The scene is similar in Tarik Matar, five minutes drive from Fallah. The most recent census at this camp figures 325 families from Tawargha.

From the room she shares with eight members of her family, Azma, a refugee from Tawargha, showed a portrait of her brother. On Sep. 13 Abdullah was taken from the car he was travelling in with his three children and his sister at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Tripoli.

The last they know of what happened to him is in the autopsy report Azma keeps with her: "Died from several injuries caused by solid and flexible objects throughout the body, especially in the forehead and chest."

Inevitably, the families of the seven young men recently dragged away from this camp fear a similar fate for them.

"We are asking for more security and for those from Misrata to be able to return to our houses without fear of reprisal," said Mabrouk Mohammed, a former physical education teacher who coordinates entry of food and supplies to the complex, mostly from private initiatives. But return to Tawargha is a forgotten dream for most.

Abdullah Fakir, head of Tripoli’s Military Council, had told IPS they would increase security at camps where the Tawarghis are staying. But with militias from Misrata showing up at the camps often, nobody feels secure.

Libya: Jew who tried to rebuild synagogue to be deported -- "There is no place for Jews in Libya"

More glories of the Arab Spring

Πηγή: JW
Oct 10 2011

David Gerbi believed the news stories about a flowering of Western values in Libya. He took the mainstream media at its word, and people like Barack Obama at their word, that what was happening in Libya was a wonderful throwing-off of oppression and reaffirmation of human rights. But when he got there, he discovered the brutal truth behind all the fog of political correctness: "There is no place for Jews in Libya."

More on this story. "Following calls for deportation, Gerbi to return to Rome," by Lisa Palmieri-Billig for the Jerusalem Post, October 10 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A few hundred angry protesters gathered in central Tripoli on the eve of Yom Kippur on Friday, calling for the deportation of a Libyan Jew who has been trying to reopen a synagogue sealed since ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi expelled the country’s Jewish community in 1967.

The protesters carried signs reading, “There is no place for the Jews in Libya,” and “We don’t have a place for Zionism.”

The crowds tried to storm Italian Libyan Jewish psychoanalyst David Gerbi’s Corinthia Hotel in central Tripoli. There was also a demonstration in Benghazi in the east of the country.

According to Gerbi, the crowd wanted to forcibly remove him from the hotel.

“They were impeded by hotel and Libyan security and government officials,” he said.

Gerbi said that National Security Adviser Abdel Karim Bazama, rebel leader Mustafa Saghezli, Interior Minister Ahmed Dharat and Justice Minister Muhammad Allaghi were among the government officials present at the hotel.

“The Tripoli crowd dispersed after Allaghi warned that any use of force on the part of the protesters would immediately result in strong international condemnation,” Gerbi said.

“He [Allaghi] reassured them the ‘problem’ would be resolved within 48 hours.”

The demonstrations were ignited by an attempt by Dr.Gerbi to clean the debris and pray in Tripoli’s abandoned Dar Bishi Synagogue. Dr. Gerbi had joined the National Transitional Council (NTC) rebel group last spring, first as a volunteer at the Benghazi Psychiatric Hospital and then joining and helping the rebels themselves.

“This incident has served to expose the dangerous reality simmering beneath the surface,” he said.

“I want to contribute to, not obstruct, the building of a new democratic and pluralistic Libya. It is sad and absurd that my mere presence in Libya, should set off so much hostility and I regret this,” Gerbi said.

“However,” he continued, “what happened reveals the extent of Gaddafi’s anti-Semitic conditioning of an entire generation, those in their forties and fifties. Forty-two years of lies, of hate propaganda falsely accusing Jews of having been paid off to abandon the country in 1967, of having robbed Palestinians of their homes and of planning to colonize Libya.”

“Fortunately, the older generation still recalls warm friendships with former Jewish neighbors,” Gerbi said, “and I will continue to work to restore a 2,300-year-old coexistence and advocate active roles in the NTC for Libyan Jews, for the Libyan Amazigh population, for women and all ethnic and religious minorities.”...

It's not Gaddafi, Gerbi, it's Islam. The "warm friendships" of which you speak were forged when Libya was under strong Western influence. Now that is long gone.

Black life is cheap in Libya

Πηγή: Time
By Justice Malala

Sep. 19 2011

They are killing black people in Libya. They are killing them in the street, they are killing them in hospitals, they are killing them in transit camps, they are killing them in their houses.

They are not killing any old African. They are killing black Africans, the dark, sub-Saharan Africans. Skin tone, the darkness of one's skin, has become for many blacks in Libya the difference between prison and freedom, death and life.

The rebels who gunned for the toppling of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi have for the past six months been killing anyone who looks dark. Given that there are between a million and two million black Africans in Libya, a slow and under-reported massacre is unfolding in that country.

No one is saying anything. When African leaders such as President Jacob Zuma speak, they speak for Gaddafi but not for the people who are now being routinely murdered at the hands of the rebels - the people who are today in power across large swathes of Libya.

African newspapers and television channels report on the conflict as if they are European, Chinese or American. We never write about the fact that over the past few months anyone with a dark skin has been stopped in the streets of Libya and searched. It is almost like the days of apartheid. These people are then either arrested, tortured or murdered.

No one cares about their fate. They are black after all, and black life is cheapest among Africans. That is why we are not up in arms.

The killings in Libya have cover. Gaddafi, at the beginning of the conflict, used his considerable wealth to hire mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa to terrorise locals and push back the rebel advance. The mercenaries were from everywhere. There were Nigerians, there were veterans from the wars in Ivory Coast and word is that there were even South Africans among them.

These were some of the hired guns of Gaddafi's regime.

These mercenaries would be the ones staging shows of force as Gaddafi shook his fist at the free world. They drove around in Jeeps, shot into the air and pretended that all was fine in the world.

It was not. Now Gaddafi has fallen. Many of the mercenaries have returned home, their hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away. What is left in Libya are the ordinary black people, the ones who have been cleaning for the Libyans all along, building the roads and doing the menial jobs that the rich Libyans would not do.

They are the ones who are dying now. On August 31 an Amnesty International team reported that black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans "are at high risk of abuse by anti-Gaddafi forces".

"An Amnesty delegation visiting the Central Tripoli Hospital last Monday witnessed three thuwwar revolutionaries (as opposition fighters are commonly known) dragging a black patient from the western town of Tawargha from his bed and detaining him. The men were in civilian clothing.

"The thuwwar said the man would be taken to Misratah for questioning, arguing that interrogators in Tripoli 'let killers free'. Two other black Libyans receiving treatment in the hospital for gunshot wounds were warned by the anti-Gaddafi forces that 'their turn was coming'."

Amnesty International is being extremely diplomatic with its language. Human rights activists are reporting that black people have been disappearing all over Libya over the past nine months as the rebels started taking out Gaddafi forces. As rebels arrived in towns, they merely sought out blacks and either killed them on the spot or arrested them. Many have died of starvation in those "prisons".

Wherever alleged Gaddafi forces are found to have been executed, most of those murdered have been black. Video footage of ordinary black men who have been working in Libya being executed is available on the internet. Their sin is that some black mercenaries worked for Gaddafi, and their sin now is that they are black.

The US and Nato, after helping the rebels bomb Libya, have been quiet on this issue. They have blood on their hands. Would they be so quiet if whites were being murdered in such large numbers in Libya?

And where are the Africans? The AU is petulant, refusing to speak or intervene, while their brothers and sisters are being murdered.

What a courageous bunch.

The Disinvited: The New Libya's New Racism

Πηγή: Time
By ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER

Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011

The Libyan rebels at a checkpoint in the western suburb of Ghout al-Shaal are handing out fliers to passing drivers to wish them a Happy Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of a month of fasting for Ramadan. "Thank God for making our holiday into two holidays," the flier reads. "The Eid al-Fitr and the holiday of our victory over the injustice and oppression that the dictator [Muammar Gaddafi] and his cronies inflicted on us over the course of 42 years." Much of Libya is celebrating this week, after rebels pushed into the capital nearly two weeks ago, ushering in a new era.

But several miles away, just off the same stretch of coastal road is a camp full of men, women, and children who have lost a lot and gained little from Gaddafi's downfall. Hundreds of black African migrant workers have filled a small fishing port here, filtering in over recent months as they sought an escape from a country at war. Many were already refugees who had fled civil strife in Sudan or Somalia to find a better, safer life in a country that was once uniquely welcoming of sub-Saharan Africans. "Now I don't have any place to go," says Abdel Nasser Mohamed, who fled with his father from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region at the age of five, after losing half his family to tribal clashes.

Nearly 25 years later, Mohamed found himself on the run once again, as fighting engulfed the Libyan coastal city of Misrata where he grew up, and foreign Africans became figures of suspicion.

The makeshift camp he and the others now inhabit is woefully devoid of food, drinking water, and toilets. A representative for the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders, says that diarrhea and other diseases borne of poor hygiene are running rampant. And shelters consist of little more than blankets and rope strung haphazardly between grounded wooden fishing boats.

The displaced hail from countries across mostly West Africa, like Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone. Many have lived in Libya for years — even decades — and carry the legal papers to prove it; their presence rooted in Gaddafi's legacy of fostering close relationships with fellow African regimes, and recruiting loyalists from among their citizens. But for a man who often sought to portray himself as a leader of the continent, Gaddafi may have done more to divide his country's future than to encourage tolerance and respect.

It's popular knowledge among the predominantly Arab and Berber rebel ranks here that Gaddafi funded questionable African warlords and armies, even as his own population struggled. And at his home in Tripoli's Bab al-Aziziya compound, rebels hold up old pictures of Gaddafi posing with African children dressed in fatigues as further evidence of their former ruler's betrayal.

His alleged mercenaries — particularly, the men who populated the fearsome Khamis Brigade, which was used to assault the rebels over the course of their six month revolt — often came from the southern town of Sabha, or the neighboring countries of Mali, Niger, and Chad. The foreigners were alleged to receive benefits, and even fast-track residency, in exchange for their services as loyalists and fighters, a practice, whether real or exaggerated, that has fueled deep tribal, ethnic, and geographic mistrust.

The line between regime soldier and dark-skinned southerner or migrant worker has grown murkier in the fog of war. Throughout the conflict, the rebels have often been eager to offer reporters their proof of foreign fighters in the form of dark-skinned bodies, foreign passports, and ethnic charms that they've found along the front lines. And in the aftermath, foreign blacks and southern Libyans remain prime suspects, even as rebels sweep pacified neighborhoods of Tripoli.

On Monday, rebels who had taken over a military airbase outside the capital prodded two new prisoners in the bed of a truck. They were Sudanese men who they said were certainly mercenaries because they had no papers. "The Sudanese rape women," one rebel said, matter-of-factly.

More than 120 other suspects — most of them foreign Africans — are being held at a school in central Tripoli, in the absence of a functioning government or justice system. There are rumors of other ad-hoc prisons. And a guard, Jamal Mohamed, is sure they are snipers. "Polisario," he adds, referring to a resistance movement in Western Sahara, from which Gaddafi allegedly recruited. Some of the captives have been punched in the eyes, or nurse bandaged wounds sustained during fighting. Many were apprehended during battles in Gaddafi stronghold neighborhoods. At least two admit to being members of the regime's forces.

But many others say they were captured by accident, or targeted out of racism or xenophobia. Abou Bakr from Niger says he had merely gone outside to look for water, but lived in the wrong neighborhood, one where rebels happened to be searching for loyalists.

Tripoli is a racially diverse city, with skin colors ranging from pale to very dark — largely because Gaddafi encouraged such integration. And the Libyan rebels display the same diversity amongst their ranks. But a latent racism festers, along with the hazy rules that only locals seem to understand that distinguish between "good" black people and "bad." The logic follows the lines of Gaddafi's uneven favors, which, even in Tripoli often served personal ambitions more than the public good.

The Abu Slim neighborhood near Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound has long been a regime stronghold manipulated carefully by the ruling family. "[Gaddafi's son] Saif al-Islam used to come here and give kids 200 Dinars and a Kalashnikov. [His other son] Khamis would come too," says Ramadan Ali Osman, whose apartment was destroyed in the recent fighting. A poor neighborhood, populated lightly with regime officials and a large number of African migrants, Abu Slim proved to be a ripe recruiting ground for cheap government fighters. "They would drive in — the brigades — and recruit kids for their forces," says Osman. Just days before the rebels captured Tripoli, residents say Gaddafi's son Saadi was the last one to make an appeal. "Saadi came here to form a brigade out of the youth," says Adil Masoud Moussa, a resident. "He gave money to a big boss in the neighborhood to give to the youth to fight against anyone who hated his father."

The bought loyalties have contributed to an atmosphere fraught with racial tensions throughout Tripoli and Gaddafi-free Libya. Children sing songs about "Abu Shafshoufah" — a derogatory nickname for Gaddafi that translates roughly as "Father of the frizzy hair." And even some of the rebels seem to characterize their ranks as consisting of originals and followers, that cut along tribal or geographic lines. "Most of the people here in Souk al-Jumaa are native to Tripoli, unlike the people in Abu Slim who he brought from other parts of Libya," says Ashraf Hajaj, a resident of a rebel stronghold neighborhood.

Back at the makeshift camp at the port, the main thing on most people's minds is escape. Many say they have trouble sleeping, after encountering violent attacks en route to the coast. And most are afraid to venture outside, even to fetch badly needed supplies. "If you go outside, you might get caught. So we drink salt water," says Alexander Zenda, a Nigerian. Four days ago, six Nigerian boys left the camp to search for drinking water and never came back, he adds.

At night the city is wracked by gunshots. Since the rebel take-over of Tripoli last week, a few philanthropists have ventured into the camp with gifts of food and water, they say. But for months, men with guns used to come to loot and beat people up, the camp's inhabitants say. "They came in here robbing our gas, stealing our property," says Margaret Asanti, a Nigerian who has been at the camp for almost two months with her two young children. She lived a relatively stable existence in Tripoli for 12 years. But she says: "If you take me to my country, I'd be very happy. I'm tired of being in this place."

Libya's spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism

Men accused of being mercenaries fighting for Muammar Gaddafi sit in a rebel vehicle in Tripoli. Photograph: Youssef Boudlal/Reuters

Πηγή: Guardian

By Richard Seymour

Tuesday 30 August 2011

The murder of black men in the aftermath of the rebellion speaks of a society deeply divided for decades by Muammar Gaddafi

This is a bad time to be a black man in Libya," reported Alex Thomsonon Channel 4 News on Sunday. Elsewhere, Kim Sengupta reported for the Independent on the 30 bodies lying decomposing in Tripoli. The majority of them, allegedly mercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi, were black. They had been killed at a makeshift hospital, some on stretchers, some in an ambulance. "Libyan people don't like people with dark skins,"a militiaman explained in reference to the arrests of black men.

The basis of this is rumours, disseminated early in the rebellion, of African mercenaries being unleashed on the opposition. Amnesty International's Donatella Rivera was among researchers who examined this allegation and found no evidence for it. Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch similarly had not "identified one mercenary" among the scores of men being arrested and falsely labelled by journalists as such.

Lurking behind this is racism. Libya is an African nation – however, the term "Africans" is used in Libya to reference the country's black minority. The Amnesty International researcher Diana Eltahawy says that the rebels taking control of Libya have tapped into "existing xenophobia". The New York Times refers to "racist overtones", but sometimes the racism is explicit. A rebel slogan painted in Misrata during the fighting salutes "the brigade for purging slaves, black skin". A consequence of this racism has been mass arrests of black men, and gruesome killings – just some of the various atrocities that human rights organisations blame rebels for. The racialisation of this conflict does not end with hatred of "Africans". Graffiti by rebels frequently depicted Gaddafi as a demonic Jew.

How did it come to this? A spectacular revolution, speaking the language of democracy and showing tremendous courage in the face of brutal repression, has been disgraced. Racism did not begin with the rebellion – Gaddafi's regime exploited 2 million migrant workers while discriminating against them – but it has suffused the rebels' hatred of the violently authoritarian regime they have just replaced.

An explanation for this can be found in the weaknesses of the revolt itself. The upsurge beginning on 17 February hinged on an alliance between middle class human rights activists and the working classes in eastern cities such as Benghazi. Rather than wilting under repression, the rebellion spread to new towns and cities. Elements of the regime, seeing the writing on the wall, began to defect. Military leaders, politicians and sections of business and academia sided with the rebels.

But the trouble was that the movement was almost emerging from nowhere. Unlike in Egypt, where a decade of activism and labour insurgency had cultivated networks of activists and trade unionists capable of outfoxing the dictatorship, Libya was not permitted a minimal space for civil society opposition. As a result, there was no institutional structure able to express this movement, no independent trade union movement, and certainly little in the way of an organised left. Into this space stepped those who had the greatest resources – the former regime notables, businessmen and professionals, as well as exiles. It was they who formed the National Transitional Council (NTC).

The dominance of relatively conservative elites and the absence of countervailing pressures skewed the politics of the rebellion. We hear of "the masses", and "solidarity". But masses can be addressed on many grounds – some reactionary. There are also many bases for solidarity – some exclusionary. The scapegoating of black workers makes sense from the perspective of elites. For them, Libya was not a society divided on class lines from which many of them had profited. It was united against a usurper inhabiting an alien compound and surviving through foreign power. Instead, the more success Gaddafi had in stabilising his regime, the more the explanation for this relied on the claim that "Gaddafi is killing us with his Africans ".

A further, unavoidable twist is the alliance with Nato. The February revolt involved hundreds of thousands of people across Libya. By early March the movement was in retreat, overseas special forces were entering Libya, and senior figures in the rebellion called for external intervention. Initially isolated, they gained credibility as Gaddafi gained ground. As a result, the initiative passed from a very large popular base to a relatively small number of armed fighters under the direction of the NTC and Nato. It was the rebel army that subsequently took the lead in persecuting black workers.

Under different conditions, perhaps, unity between the oppressed was possible. But this would probably have required a more radical alliance, one as potentially perilous for those now grooming themselves for office as for Gaddafi. As it is, the success of the rebels contains a tragic defeat. The original emancipatory impulse of February 17 lies, for now, among the corpses of "Africans" in Tripoli.