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Sunday, July 15, 2012

truth - the wounded casualty of war

“The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi,” stated Nasser al-Hawary, researcher with the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights. Hawary is no fan of the Gaddafi regime. The former Salafist and political oponent of Gaddafi was imprisoned numerous times as a poitical dissident by Gaddafi’s secret police. Hawary emerged from his periods of incarceration beaten and bloodied, but not broken.

Despite the interim National Transitional Council’s (NTC) pledge to bring the more than 6,000 detainees currently in detention to trial or to release them, only some have been freed while the atrocities committed by pro-revolutionary rebels have been overlooked. Armed militias controlling the streets and enforcing their version of law and order is a problem even in the major cities where the NTC has supposedly retaken control.

“All the young men here have guns,” former rebel fighter Suheil al Lagi tells IPS. “They are accustomed to sorting out political differences and petty squabbles this way, or they rob people using weapons. The high unemployment and financial hardship is aggravating the situation...This is not the new Libya we fought for and we may have to take up arms again if the corruption and greed continue. This time against the new government,” warns al Lagi.”

Meanwhile in Syria, amidst the slaughter, the propaganda and misinformation war carries on unabated. A government attack on the Syrian village of Tremseh was described by the media as a massacre of innocent civilians. The BBC's Jim Muir says the UN initial findings are more in line with the government's claims that it was attacking what it calls "nests of terrorists" or rebel hideouts.

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