The Most Well Connected Poorman in America: Alex Engwete: Libyan revolutionaries are blood-drenched racist goons murdering Blacks en masse in Tripoli (The Guardian, The Independent & MSF)

Alex Engwete: Libyan revolutionaries are blood-drenched racist goons murdering Blacks en masse in Tripoli (The Guardian, The Independent & MSF)

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Libyan revolutionaries are blood-drenched racist goons murdering Blacks en masse in Tripoli (The Guardian, The Independent & MSF)

An African migrant worker arrested by racist revolutionaries in Tripoli for being black

(Credits)

***

“Libyans don’t like people with dark skins”
--A Libyan racist revolutionary to The Independent the arrests and killing sprees of Black Africans

***

I was an early supporter of the February-17 Libyan revolution. I even published a few posts here on their behalf when I was in Kinshasa: the first one going as far back as March 11 and titled “Sarkozy shows leadership over Libya”, when Gaddafi was threatening to kill everyone in Benghazi; on March 8, an appreciation of Congolese president Joseph Kabila for chartering planes to evacuate 400 hundred stranded Congolese from Tripoli (“DRC government evacuates Congolese stuck at Tripoli Airport”); then on March 16, my translation of a post by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé published on his blog and entitled “Our Honor.”

But then these heroes of mine entered Tripoli and then it hit me: these revolutionaries are blood-drenched racist goons murdering Blacks en masse on the pretext of their being Gaddafi mercenaries.

Now read these wrenching and revulsive reports of blatant racist killing sprees and mistreatments of Blacks by Libyan revolutionaries:

1) The Independent: “Rebels settle scores in Libyan capital” (August 27);

2) The Independent: “'Libyans don't like people with dark skin, but some are innocent'” (August 30);

2) The Guardian: “Libya’s spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism” (August 30); and

3) A distressed call by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) on behalf of stranded Black African migrant workers: “Hundreds of migrants need protection in Tripoli-MSF” (August 30):

Paraphrasing the title of the Guardian article, I’d say that these people are disgraceful racists, of the same repulsive ilk as those Arab slave-traders of the bloody past of Africa.

As Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman pointedly writes today in a post ominously titled “Libya, a hell for Black Africans”:

“On top of the anti-Black racism, which is found in Egypt and other Arab countries, the rebels’ attitude can also be explained by the fact that under Gaddafi, Libya employed more than two million [migrant] workers of African origin. The latter filled subaltern jobs shunned by Libyans who disdained these menial workers of their economy who also had however access like them to health care and decent housing.”

In other words: had these Africans been living in squalid conditions, they wouldn’t have been rounded and killed en masse. These blood-drenched goons are no better than the wife of one of Gaddafi’s sons who burned, tortured, and tormented her Ethiopian maid.

Just as I finish writing, I watch on CNN a report filed by Nick Robertson from a Tripoli prison where Blacks are crammed in jail cells, in contrast to Gaddafi’s captured soldiers whose cells are more spacious. One Black African was featured screaming that she’d been robbed of her life savings before being thrown in jail!

Once again, I commend President Joseph Kabila for chartering those two flights in early March to evacuate 400 Congolese stuck at Tripoli Airport and saving them from these blood-thirsty racists. That’s called proactive leadership. And shame to the other African leaders who didn’t do the same.