European Forum

U.N.: Libyan crackdown ‘escalates’

Today (Friday 25 February) another day of violence has hit Libya. Reportedly, tens of thousands of Libyans have taken to the streets following the midday prayer and are calling for the end of Col Muammar Gaddafi’s rule. Witnesses in Tripoli say pro-Gaddafi forces have opened fire on protesters. According to the Associated Press news agency at least six had been killed.

Today’s protests come one day after Gaddafi spoke on state television, accusing al-Qaeda for fermenting the uprising and drugging and brainwashing the country's youth. Earlier this week the country’s leader gave a rambling public speech in which the leader vowed to die “a martyr” in his country rather than step down in the face of a spreading revolt.

For the past week, fighting has raged between anti-government forces and troops loyal to Gaddafi, who has been in power for 42 years. The death toll since violence began remains unclear. However on 24 February Francois Zimeray, France's top human rights official, said it could be as high as 2,000 people killed.

International reactions
Today, the UN Human Rights Council is meeting in special session in Geneva for the first time to discuss the crisis in Libya. Libya is an elected member of the council but some members have called for it to lose its seat. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay has said that Libya's bloody crackdown on protesters is "escalating alarmingly" and "thousands may have been killed or injured".

"Although reports are still patchy and hard to verify, one thing is painfully clear: in (a) brazen and continuing breach of international law, the crackdown in Libya of peaceful demonstrations is escalating alarmingly with reported mass killings, arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of protesters," Pillay stated.

NATO ambassadors are also meeting in emergency session on Friday afternoon. NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said NATO has no intention of intervening in Libya.

France and the U.K. were preparing to table a resolution at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council later today that would include sanctions, a total ban on arms imports and a probe by the International Criminal Court

On 24 February, US President Barack Obama denounced the violent crackdown by the Libyan authorities on peaceful protesters as "outrageous and unacceptable". Obama said the world had to speak with "one voice", and that the US was drawing up a range of options for action in consultation with its allies.

A joint EU-Russia statement on the same day said that the two sides "condemn and consider unacceptable the use of military force to break up peaceful demonstrations."

Libya has been in the grip of turmoil since anti-Gaddafi protests began on February 15. The demonstrations seem to have been ignited by the wave of protests in the Middle East, all fuelled by discontent over unemployment, rising living costs, corruption and autocratic leaderships.

Sources: BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Volkskrant (Dutch)
Photo: Flickr - Crethi Plethi