Human rights in Libya

The Kingdom of Libya, from 1951 to 1969, was heavily influenced and educated by the British and American oil companies. The King was very westernized and Libya also had a consitution. The kingdom, however, was marked by a feudal regime, where Libya had a low literacy rate of 10%, a low life expectancy of 57 years, and 40% of the population lived in shanties, tents, or caves.

From 1969 to 2011, the history of Libya was marked by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (where jamahiriya means "state of the masses"), a "direct democracy" political system established by Muammar Gaddafi, who nominally stepped down from power in 1977, but remained an unofficial "Brother Leader" until 2011. Under the Jamahiriya, the country's literacy rate rose to 90%, and welfare systems were introduced that allowed access to free education, free healthcare, and financial assistance for housing. The Great Manmade River was also built to allow free access to fresh water across large parts of the country. In addition, financial support was provided for university scholarships and employment programs, while the nation as a whole was largely debt-free. As a result, Libya's Human Development Index in 2010 was the highest in Africa and greater than that of Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations Human Rights Council mostly praised the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya's human rights record in a January 2011 report, with most nations generally praising the country's progress in human rights though several other nations raised concerns about a few human rights abuses that need investigating. Amnesty International, however, was more critical in its 2010 report. In 2005, the US government-funded Freedom House gave low ratings for political rights and civil liberties, and gave it the freedom rating of "Not Free".

Political, ethnic and religious oppression

In the early 1970s, Gaddafi created the Revolutionary Committees as conduits for raising political consciousness, with the aim of direct political participation by all Libyans rather than a traditional party-based representative system. In 1979, however, some of these committees had eventually evolved into self-appointed, sometimes zealous, enforcers of revolutionary orthodoxy. During the early 1980s, these committees had considerable power and became a growing source of tension within the Jamihiriya, to the extent that Gaddafi sometimes criticized their effectiveness and excessive repression, until the power of the Revolutionary Committees were eventually restricted in the late 1980s.

The Revolutionary Committees had been accused of resembling similar systems in Totalitarian countries; reportedly, 10 to 20 percent of Libyans worked in surveillance for these committees, with surveillance taking place in government, in factories, and in the education sector. They also posted bounties for the killing of Libyan critics charged with treason abroad. Opposition activists were occasionally executed publicly and the executions were rebroadcast on public television channels.

In 1988, Gaddafi criticized the excessive measures taken by the Revolutionary Councils, stating that "they deviated, harmed, tortured" and that "the true revolutionary does not practise repression." That same year, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya issued the Great Green Document on Human Rights, in which Article 5 established laws that allowed greater freedom of expression. Article 8 of The Code on the Promotion of Freedom stated that "each citizen has the right to express his opinions and ideas openly in People’s Congresses and in all mass media." A number of restrictions were also placed on the power of the Revolutionary Committees, leading to a resurgence in the Libyan state's popularity by the early 1990s. In 2004, however, Libya posted a $1 million bounty for journalist Ashur Shamis, under the allegation that he was linked to Al-Qaeda and terror suspect Abu Qatada.

Until recently, foreign languages were not part of the school curriculum. One protester in 2011 described the situation as: "None of us can speak English or French. He kept us ignorant and blindfolded". The US State Department claimed that ethnic, Islamic fundamentalist and tribal minorities suffer discrimination, and that the state continues to restrict the labour rights of foreign workers. In 1998, CERD expressed concern about alleged “acts of discrimination against migrant workers on the basis of their national or ethnic origin,” which the United Nations Human Rights Council also expressed concern about in 2010. Human Rights Watch in September 2006 documented how migrant workers and other foreigners were subjected to human rights abuses, which have increased drastically against black Africans under the National Transitional Council following the 2011 Libyan Civil War.

HIV trial

One issue was that of the HIV trial in Libya, in which six foreign health workers (five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor) were accused of deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV-tainted blood in a hospital in 1999. On May 6, 2004, a Libyan court sentenced the workers to death. They were eventually freed in 2007, following European diplomatic mobilisation.

Abu Salim prison massacre

Main article: Abu Salim prison

In 2006, Amnesty International has called for an independent inquiry into deaths that occurred there in Abu Salim maximum security prison in the 1996 riot. In 2009, Human Rights Watch believes that 1,270 prisoners were killed.

In 2009, the Libyan government stated that the killings took place amid confrontation between the government and rebels from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and that some 200 guards were killed as well. In January 2011, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya confirmed that it was carrying out an investigation into the incident along with international investigators.

Torture

In January 2011, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya stated that the practice of torture and ill treatment was forbidden in article 434 of the Penal Code, which stated that public officials who had ordered the torture of a person or had committed an act of torture were sentenced to 3 to 10 years’ imprisonment. Gaddafi openly condemned the use of torture, as a criticism against several Revolutionary Committees that had condoned the use of torture.

Torture was allegedly used by Libya's security forces to punish rebels after the rebellion hit north west Libya during the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Torture has been used extensively by rebel forces, who established unofficial detention facilities equipped with torture devices such as ropes, sticks and rubber hoses. The rebels have used torture against many suspected Gaddafi supporters, targetting black Africans in particular.

2011 civil war

Main articles: Human rights violations in the 2011 Libyan civil war, Muammar Gaddafi's response to the 2011 Libyan civil war, and Protests against the 2011 military intervention in Libya

Various states and supranational bodies have condemned the use of military and mercenaries against Libyan civilians during the 2011 Libyan civil war, an allegation that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi denies.

After an emergency meeting on 22 February, the Arab League suspended Libya from taking part in council meetings and Moussa issued a statement condemning the "crimes against the current peaceful popular protests and demonstrations in several Libyan cities." Libya was suspended from the UN Human Rights Council by a unanimous vote of the UN General Assembly, citing the Gaddafi government's use of violence against protesters. A number of governments, including Britain, Canada, Switzerland, the United States, Germany and Australia took action to freeze assets of Gaddafi and his associates. The move was criticised as double-standard as numerous similar human right abuses in Bahrain, Yemen or elsewhere produced no action at all.

On 26 February 2011, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously in a resolution to impose strict sanctions, including targeted travel bans, against Gaddafi's government, as well as to refer Gaddafi and other members of his regime to the International Criminal Court for investigation into allegations of brutality against civilians, which could constitute crimes against humanity in violation of international law. There are many reports of these sanctions being broken where support against Libyan government forces is the case.

NATO have been criticized for claiming to protect civilians, but instead being responsible for the deaths of far more civilians as a result. NATO and the rebel forces have been criticized for a number of human rights violations, including indiscriminate bombardment of heavily-populated cities, the massacre of civilians, the torture and killing of prisoners of war, and racist lynchings of black people.

In June 2011, a detailed investigation carried out by Amnesty International found that many of the allegations against Gaddafi and the Libyan state turned out to either be false or lack any credible evidence, noting that rebels at times appeared to have knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence. According to the Amnesty investigation, the number of casualties was heavily exaggerated, some of the protesters may have been armed, "there is no proof of mass killing of civilians on the scale of Syria or Yemen," and there is no evidence that aircraft or heavy anti-aircraft machine guns were used against crowds. It also doubted claims from the Western media that the protest movement was "entirely peaceful" and "presented no security challenge."

In July 2011, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi had an interview with Russia Today, where he denied the ICC's allegations that he or his father Muammar Gaddafi ordered the killing of civilian protesters. He pointed out that he is not a member of the government or the military, and therefore has no authority to give such orders. According to Saif, he made recorded calls to General Abdul Fatah, who later defected to the rebel forces, in order to request not to use force against protesters, to which Fatah responded that they are attacking a military site, where surprised guards fired in self-defense.

During the Battle of Sirte, the rebels killed many civilians, including men, women, and children, while there were also reports of the rebels harassing and stealing from the locals. According to one resident, "The rebels are worse than rats. Nato is the same as Osama bin Laden." According to another local woman, "We lived in democracy under Muammer Gaddafi, he was not a dictator. I lived in freedom, Libyan women had full human rights. It isn't that we need Muammer Gaddafi again, but we want to live just as we did before." A local elderly woman stated "They are killing our children. Why are they doing this? For what? Life was good before!"

See also

• 2011 Libyan civil war
• Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights

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• Human rights violations in the 2011 Libyan civil war
• LGBT rights in Libya

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External links

• Amnesty International. LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA.BRIEFING TO THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE, 2007
• US Depratment of State.2008 Human Rights Report: Libya
• Library of Congress country study
• Censorship in Libya - IFEX

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