A grim new report from UN Special Envoy to Libya Ian Martin has added to the growing concerns about the National Transitional Council’s (NTC’s) expanding hold over the country, and an unstable situation which officials say is open to massive abuse.
Earlier this week Amnesty International detailed the widespread torture inside the NTC-run “makeshift prisons” being set up across the West, warning over 2,500 were being held. The UN’s reports, will confirming the grim treatment, say that as many as 7,000 are actually being held.
The UN Human Rights Office warns that the NTC is doing little about screening or registering the detainees, with 67 facilities full of “suspected mercenaries,” the NTC euphemism for black people, as well as people whose names appeared on a list the NTC drafted of people to be rounded up after Western Libya was captured.
Held without charges, without access to any legal system, and guarded by former rebels hungry for revenge, the detainees are subjected to regular beatings. The guards were very open about the beatings when talking to human rights groups, saying they were a way of more quickly obtaining “confessions” from the captives.
With myriad factions fighting and the new regime showing no more respect for human rights than the last one, post-Gadhafi Libya is shaping up to be a very dangerous place. That danger is unlikely to remain confined to Libya, either, with the massive number of missing missiles becoming a focus for terrorist groups hoping to secure more advanced equipment.
As if we did not know from day one what was going to happen when government collapses, and the civil war deteriorates into a free for all violence. Why talk about "human rights violations". Torture of thousands of innocents is what this should be called. And the rampage of free lance thugs all over cities and villages resulting in untold deaths, rapes, home lootings. And UN drones on…. about human rights. Where are now the "protectors of civilians", the pompous Mr. Sarkozy, and his British partner in this crime? Where is now Ms. Clinton that so ably persuaded European duo to "take the initiative"? All this on the heels of the massacre in Ivory Coast, and now new expedition in Uganda. Lovely. And who is underwriting all these expeditions?
NTC is following the lead from the USI. Isn´t this the way we operate all over the world? You can bet that both the Brits and the French are deeply entrenched, leading NTC wherever possible.
So much for the "responsibility to protect". Perhaps it is time for Russia, China, Brazil, India, etc. to become more pro-active in defending the rest of the World from the brutality of the West and its lackeys around the World. How about starting with those paragons of democracy, tolerance, anti-anti-semitism and human rights, Saudi Arabia and Qatar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The atrocities we see now, from the NTC-rebels against lojalists and black libyans is not "the same as Ghadafi's" it is approximately 10.000 times worse or more.
Shame on UN, shame on Nato, and shame on my own Swedish government. Why don't we stop them? In a democracy the leaders ought not to be allowed to bomb people where ever they want and whenever they wish to do so.
I am absolutely certain that if the peoples in US and Europe knew what is going on in Libya they wouldn't agree with their governments. So also, shame and double shame on the Western media.
"No one could have predicted that the NTC would act in such an undemocratic manner."
Future quote from NATO headquarters and the US State Department