Here is a small nation with a big heart standing up for justice. Thank you Peru.

(AP) — Peru’s government has announced it is suspending diplomatic relations with Libya to protest the violence unleashed by its leader Muammar Gaddafi against his people.

A statement released Tuesday evening by President Alan Garcia’s office on its website said Peru would ask the UN Security Council to establish an exclusion zone in Libyan airspace “to prevent the use of that country’s warplanes against (its) population.”

Other developments

* The Arab League has suspended Libya from its sessions in light of violent crackdowns on anti-government protests, said media reports citing regional news network Al Jazeera. Earlier on Tuesday, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa spoke of ‘Arab anger about what is happening to civilians in Libya,’ the report added. A League statement read out by Secretary-General Arm Moussa strongly condemned what it called crimes against civilians, the recruiting of foreign mercenaries and the use of live ammunition and heavy weapons by Libyan forces.

* Witnesses have reported that Benghazi has essentially been taken over by the opposition. – CNN

* On Sunday, Maj. Gen. Suleiman Mahmoud, the commander of the Tobruk Garrison, took off his shoes and entered a mosque, he said. Inside he hailed the martyrs of the revolution and told the people he was with them. Hundreds gathered around him and wept. Mahmoud said that he had participated in Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution but that his family had persuaded him in recent days to turn against the government. His daughter, who holds a doctorate, sobbed into the phone, telling him of the hundreds who had been killed in their home town of Benghazi. Many were teenage boys, and some were the neighbors’ children. “I decided to withdraw from the revolutionary army and join the people,” Mahmoud said, still in his uniform Tuesday night. – Washington Post