All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Introducing Tom Porteus.
He is the deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.
Of course, the website is hrw.org.
He's based in Washington DC, used to write for the Guardian newspaper and to journalism also for the BBC, and used to work for the UN in Somalia and Liberia.
Welcome to the show.
Tom, how are you doing?
I'm fine.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us on the show today.
Yeah, it's a pleasure.
Okay.
Now, this isn't going to make any difference in terms of anti-war.com's position on the war in Libya.
We're against it.
But I've noticed specifically in the comment section on some of my radio interviews lately, there's been a real back and forth about just how bad of a tyrant this guy, Muammar Gaddafi was.
And so before we get too far into what's been going on recently, I was wondering if you could give us a rundown on, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how bad of a dictator was Muammar Gaddafi?
We know that he tortured people for the CIA, but for example, did he regularly torture Libyans as well?
Oh, yes.
Torture was very much part of the whole armory of repression that Muammar Gaddafi used to maintain power in Libya for four decades.
He was, you know, I mean, in comparison with other dictators in the Middle East, I would say that he was right up there, one of the worst.
One of the most serious atrocities of Gaddafi's regime was the infamous Abu Salim massacre, where well over a thousand prisoners who were being held in detention at Abu Salim prison, which is on the outskirts of Tripoli, were massacred.
Many of these were political prisoners.
Human Rights Watch has been documenting that atrocity for several years.
And now that the regime has fallen, there's a whole lot of new information that has come out about it.
But just to give you an idea of the repression of the Gaddafi era, it took several years for information about that particular atrocity to leak out because of the complete stranglehold that Gaddafi had on freedom of expression, freedom of association and so forth in Libya.
So yes, I mean, it was a regime that was brutal, that denied people basic freedoms of association and expression, and that used torture, arbitrary arrest, and executions of political prisoners to impose its will on the people.
And indeed, you know, the uprising, I think, was in direct response to that.
People just felt after four decades, and when they saw what was happening in Tunisia and Egypt, two neighbouring countries, they felt that this was their moment to rise up against the repression of the regime.
And of course, the regime then responded with utter brutality, and hundreds of people were killed in the first days of the uprising.
And then more were killed in the subsequent civil war that has now come to an end.
Now, when Barack Obama announced that NATO was going to intervene, the UN passes no fly zone, and in the President's speech, he said that Benghazi is a city the size of Charlotte, North Carolina, and he believed, and he decided to stop what was sure to be a massacre, apparently, of every man, woman and child in Benghazi.
Did that ring true to you at the time?
I think that we had very serious concerns at the time that this uprising that had taken place, and which had succeeded in ejecting Qadhafi forces from almost half the country for a brief period, it was pretty clear at the time, just before the military intervention, that if Qadhafi did manage, as he looked like he would, to reimpose control on Eastern Libya and on Benghazi in particular, then there would be very, very serious reprisals.
I don't know about every man, woman and child, but it was clear that there was a very, very urgent need for civilian protection of some kind at that time.
So, yeah, there was a serious humanitarian crisis looming, and it was clear that unless something was done, there were going to be very serious consequences.
Now, for the fighters or for civilians who happen to be around?
I mean, once a man picks up a rifle, he's not quite the civilian anymore, at least in one of America's wars.
That's how you go from being a civilian to an insurgent.
Indeed, and that's also the position of international law.
But I think given Qadhafi's previous record on his treatment of his political opponents, it was safe to assume that reprisals wouldn't only be taken against insurgent fighters, but would be taken against all those who were considered to have supported the uprising.
And let's not forget that just weeks before, the uprising that started peacefully was the subject of a brutal attempt involving hundreds of deaths by Qadhafi forces to put it down with extreme violence.
Right.
Although, didn't they exaggerate it and claim the rebels at the time that more than 10,000 people had already been killed?
Well, the figures that Human Rights Watch were working with at that time, and obviously it was difficult for us to collect that information, but we were able to because of our network of contacts on the ground.
And these were figures that we were able to get from doctors working in eastern Libya and from hospitals.
The figures that we were working with were in the hundreds.
But that's quite a large number of people to be killed just in a few days in the course of the suppression of what initially, at least, was a peaceful uprising.
Yeah.
Airstrikes on protesters in the streets.
Yeah.
The use of heavy weapons against protesters.
What we'd seen up until then in Egypt and in Tunisia was basically the police using excessive force in the form of rubber bullets, tear gas, and also live ammunition in some cases, which had killed a large number of people in Egypt, but we didn't see the use of heavy weapons, heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons against civilians.
But this is what we saw for the first time in the uprisings in the Middle East, in eastern Libya at the start of the uprising in February.
Now, I wonder, and we have very little time actually before the first break we got to take here, Tom, but I wonder from the point of view of the average Libyan, is the enemy of my enemy, my friend, as much as they wanted, Muammar Gaddafi, gone?
Are they, you think, going to like the new regime they're stuck with?
Well, I think it's very early to tell.
Certainly the sort of celebrations that we saw in Tripoli when Tripoli fell and then subsequent celebrations when finally the remnants of Gaddafi loyalists fell in Sirte, those celebrations indicated not only the widespread unpopularity of Gaddafi, but also a real sense that there was an opportunity to build a new Libya based on pluralism, respect for the rule of law, respect for human rights.
Now, obviously there are huge challenges ahead, but I think that there is, you know, there's certainly political will among, you know, those who are running the transitional authority to try to move in that direction.
And I think that they probably, it's difficult to tell because obviously there's been no polling in Libya in the circumstances, but it seems from anecdotal evidence that there is quite a lot of support behind that objective.
Of course, you know, I mean, there are challenges, there are some tribal divisions and so forth.
Well, I'm sorry, we'll have to hold it right there and go out to this break.
But when we come back with Tom Porteus from Human Rights Watch, we'll talk a little bit more about the challenges the people of Libya and the new government are facing over there. hrw.org.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all, welcome back.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Tom Porteus from Human Rights Watch, hrw.org.
And we're talking about the situation in Libya, past, present and future here.
And I wanted to ask you, Tom, whether you think that maybe the Western powers, I mean, geez, I think anybody in the world take the side of the protesters in the street that wanted to see an end of their dictatorship there.
But it looks from here in Texas reading the headlines like we've actually just installed the Ku Klux Klan in power in Libya.
Yeah, look, I mean, there are serious abuses that we've documented in the last few weeks, not just since the death of Gaddafi, but actually going back before that, that have been perpetrated by militias that are fighting on behalf of the National Transitional Council.
And it's absolutely essential that those abuses should be exposed.
And more importantly, that those who are responsible should be held accountable.
I'm not just talking about the what happened to Gaddafi.
That requires an investigation.
We need to know what happened.
If he was unlawfully killed, then you know, those responsible need to be held accountable.
But also there are, you know, there are serious issues about revenge attacks against whole communities who are perceived to have been on the side of Gaddafi, even though, you know, those whole communities may not have been.
And, you know, it's very important that those issues should be followed up on.
You know, to the credit of the National Transitional Council, they have said that they will investigate those abuses when we've drawn them to their attention.
But clearly, there are a number of militias that are not properly controlled by the National Transitional Council that are carrying out abuses.
And that needs to be addressed very, very seriously.
An old friend of the show, David Enders, is now writing for McClatchy newspapers, and he had a piece on September 8th.
African women say rebels raped them in Libyan camp.
And this is about black African women in a refugee camp, six miles west of Tripoli, say every night the rebels who ring the camp in the daytime come in, shouting whore and abducting as many as they can to rape them all night.
That's exactly, those are exactly the kinds of reports and allegations that need to be very seriously investigated.
And those who are responsible need to be held accountable.
Isn't Nicholas Sarkozy and Cameron and Obama, aren't they responsible?
Well, the people who are carrying out these abuses on the ground, are the ones who are ultimately responsible.
The NATO military intervention was justified with a Security Council resolution on the grounds of protection of civilians.
I think that there are real questions about the extent to which NATO kind of crept beyond that mandate to seek to achieve regime change.
That's a question that I think needs to be addressed more broadly.
But the reality on the ground at the moment is that the National Transitional Council does not control its militias.
And that's an issue that needs to be addressed very, very urgently, but not just that.
There's an urgent need for the National Transitional Council to deal with the militias, to deal with policing, to set up proper detentions sites, to set up a whole system of justice in these critical few weeks, where Libya does really have a chance to turn it back on the past and to develop a state based on the rule of law and reflecting international standards.
You know, we've seen from elsewhere in the world in similar situations after conflict in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Kosovo, that you actually have quite a brief window of opportunity to get things right.
You need to set up the rule of law immediately.
And there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done in terms of disarming militias, in terms of reforming the security sector.
And if you don't get it right, then it does collapse back into a sort of corrupt militia rule, or worse.
And it becomes very difficult then to sort of to rescue the situation.
And I think that's the critical issue that we need to address at the moment, rather than sort of saying, you know, who's ultimately responsible for the situation that we have at the moment in Libya.
You know, this is a critical moment.
And I think it's not just critical for Libya, but it's critical for the wider region.
Because you have throughout the region, you have people standing up after years of repression to their repressive governments.
They've been, their uprisings have been met with further repression.
We're seeing that at the moment in Syria.
And it's very, you know, people will look to Libya, to what's going on in Libya at the moment.
And they'll take lessons from that.
And I think that if Libya can get it right, if Libya can really sort of move into a new footing and to develop a state that is, you know, really different from what went before under 40 years of abusive rule by Gaddafi, that would be a shot in the arm for the whole region.
But if on the other hand, it starts to go badly wrong in Libya, then that will be a comfort, if you like, to those repressive governments that are still insisting on repressing their people, because they'll be able to say, you know, if it's not, you know, we are what stands between some kind of stability and chaos.
All right, now, I want to ask you kind of, well, there's a bunch of different directions to go and little time, but it seems like, if the rebels largely believe that, if someone is a black African up in Libya, north of the Sahara Desert, there, they must be a mercenary working for Muammar Gaddafi, then that's a pretty bad portent of how black Africans are going to continue to be treated there, if they're really all considered enemy forces.
And I know that there was a lot of, you know, rumors and propaganda about Obama's, I mean, pardon me, Gaddafi's mercenary armies, I get too confused sometimes, their mercenary armies.
And I just wondered if you know if there's any truth to that?
Is it really right that Gaddafi's forces were mostly made up of black African mercenaries?
Or is this just something that the rebels have convinced themselves?
Well, it's definitely the case that some of those who made up the Gaddafi loyalist forces were from, there were dark-skinned Libyans among them, that is, Libyans from the south of Libya, or Libyans who are sort of descendants from sub-Saharan Africans.
And there's also evidence that some of the pro-Gaddafi forces were recruited from among the sort of Saharan, Tuareg, and other tribes, you know, across Libya's southern border.
So there's, I think, little doubt that there were some sort of Africans among the pro-Gaddafi forces.
Whether one can accurately describe them as mercenaries or not, I think it's kind of hard to tell.
But probably some of them were, you know, mercenaries in any sense of the word.
But there were also a lot of, you know, non, you know, just light-skinned Libyans who were among the pro-Gaddafi forces.
So that's the kernel of truth, that's the basis for the rumors and the persecution?
I think it is, yes.
And I think that's deeply problematic, because there are a lot of dark-skinned Libyans who were anti-Gaddafi, who took a very clear position on that.
And yet, it seems as if, particularly when it comes to the Tuareg people, the people from Tuareg, the town of Tuareg, who are dark-skinned Libyans, that they are being targeted by some of the militias, not by all of them, but by some of the militias.
They've been displaced from their homes, they're not being allowed back, they're being abused, they're being arbitrarily arrested.
In some cases, their houses have been burned.
In some cases, we've documented the killing of some of these people.
This is totally, totally unjustified.
This needs to stop, and those who are responsible for this need to be held accountable.
We actually have a report on this coming out very, very shortly, on the suffering that the Tuareg people are undergoing at the hands of some of the militias who are acting on behalf of the National Transitional Council.
And I'm sorry, we're just completely out of time here.
Can you give me just a yes-no real quick?
Is anything being done about the shoulder-fired missiles?
We hope that, yeah, we've been documenting that.
We've been calling very, very strongly for these missiles to be secured, but we don't think enough is being done.
Okay, thank you so much.
Tom Porteous, hrw.org, everybody.
Thank you.
