African Governments’ appalling lack of pressure to force Libyan Leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to halt the violence and step down, reflects persistent inadequacies in the African Union (AU). Their failure to act decisively threatens progress towards democracy and respect for human rights on the continent, according to leading African civil society activists speaking today at a press conference in Johannesburg.
“The response from African governments and the African Union took so long and was so feeble that it emboldens Gaddafi in clinging on to power by any means possible, and permits him to claim the protests are a Western or Al Qaeda conspiracy,” said Ingrid Srinath, Secretary General of CIVICUS.
“African leaders must realise that their failure to speak clearly and act promptly has real consequences and costs lives. Such apathy in the face of atrocities cannot persist,” she added.
Article 3 of the Constitutive Act of the AU lists the promotion of peace, security and stability on the continent as one of its key objectives. Despite this, civil society believes the AU and African governments have been slow to react.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Congress of South African Trade Union joined Srinath and more than 40 other signatories from civil society in a joint statement demanding action from the AU.
“The carnage in Libya must stop. A leader who crushes his own people does not deserve that name – or position,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu. South Africa has a special responsibility to act
South Africa, Nigeria and Gabon currently represent Africa on the UN Security Council and as such have a special responsibility to ensure the protection of the Libyan people. Rajesh Latchman, Convenor of the Global Call to Action against Poverty in South Africa, singled out the South African Government’s need to act as a non-permanent member of
the UN Security Council since January 2011, despite their aspirations for a permanent seat.
“While an immediate and decisive response to the bloodshed in Libya is needed right now, the South African government needs to have a rapid response system to ensure diplomatic action when faced with such a crisis is not dependent on the push factor from civil society but driven by the values of our Constitution,” he said.
“For president Zuma in particular, this is not a call for you to imitate the out of office behaviour of your predecessor, it is rather a call to bring together a broad based but small collective of business, civil society and government leaders to act as a thought collective for the way our country acts when the rights of people outside our borders are violated.”
A horrifying example of an ongoing problem Latchman’s comments echo those of other civil society representatives at the press conference.
Noel Kututwa, Special Advisor with Amnesty International said that Amnesty International has accused the international community of failing the Libyan people in their hour of greatest need as Colonel Gaddafi threatened to “cleanse Libya house by house”. “The response of the UN Security Council fell shamefully below what was needed to stop the spiralling violence in Libya,” Kututwa said.
Amnesty International has called for an immediate arms embargo and assets freeze and the African Union and its member states to immediately investigate reports that armed elements are being transported from African countries to Libya, acting to secure the land borders into Libya and monitor suspicious flights.
While the situation in Libya is of immediate priority, it is also serving to highlight inadequacies on the part of the AU and African governments to respond when the security and human rights of people across the continent are threatened.
The joint statement from civil society will be distributed to the AU and African governments. It is one step in an ongoing campaign from civil society to support and protect the people of Libya as they strive to assert their democratic and human rights.
Civil society leaders pledged solidarity with all those struggling for freedom across the globe.
(For more information please contact: Rowena McNaughton, CIVICUS Media Officer, [email protected], +27 82 768 0250; www.civicus.org)
The brutal attack by mercenary forces against anti-Gaddafi protesters and civilians in Libya is now exposing refugees from Ethiopia and other African countries to vigilante attacks. The brutality of the mercenaries, many of whom were sent to Libya by planes in the past few days, is making Libyan citizens understandably bitter, and while the opposition groups are trying to calm down the angry and traumatized population and promising a fair trial for those who are suspected of being mercenaries, unfortunately incidents of harassment and attacks against innocent refugees are being reported in some of the liberated cities. An urgent call must be sent out to the people of Libya by Ethiopians around the world that most Ethiopians are as victimized as they have been by Gaddafi’s friend, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. Libyan’s must take care not to soil their revolution with the blood of innocent refugees.
The following is an interview by DW Radio with two Ethiopians in Tripoli.
[podcast]http://dw-world-od.streamfarm.net/Events/dwelle/dira/mp3/amh/D70CCB9B_1.mp3[/podcast]
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Below is an interview with a Woyanne ambassador:
[podcast]http://dw-world-od.streamfarm.net/Events/dwelle/dira/mp3/amh/B676AB67_1.mp3[/podcast]
The stupid ambassador need to be told that the Ethiopian refugees have been migrating to Libya in the first place because his regime has made Ethiopia a living hell for most citizens.
The Woyanne ambassador says that his regime did not send mercenaries to Libya. But the evidence is indisputable. Members of the Federal Police, Meles Zenawi’s personal death squad, have been sent to Libya wearing their own standard issue uniform as this photo shows. The dead soldier in the photo is wearing the distinct Ethiopian Federal Police uniform. The Federal Police soldiers were indiscriminately shooting down Ethiopian civilians following the May 2005 elections, the same way as they are shooting down Libyan civilians now. Ethiopians have first hand experience of how brutal and barbaric Meles Zenawi’s death squads are.
Ironically, the poor Ethiopian refugees in Libya, who fled from these soldiers in their own country, are now facing an angry population in Libya for what the regime in Ethiopia and its blood thirsty death squads are doing to Libyan citizens.
A talking point has been sent out from Woyanne propaganda chief Bereket Simon’s office to every Woyanne cadre around the world to say that the captured mercenaries are refugees. While asking the Libyans to protect innocent Ethiopians, we need to also condemn Meles for the reason that the refugees are in Libya, as well as for sending his killers to slaughter civilians in another country.
Libya opposition forces continue to capture mercenaries who have arrived by planes from other African countries to carry out Gaddafi’s threat of bloodshed. Some of the mercenaries were sent to Libya by Gaddafi’s long time friend and aid recipient Meles Zenawi, who himself is a genocidal dictator. The following video shows some of the soldiers along with their Ethiopian passports.
The U.K. government is notorious for its anti-human rights foreign policy. Rejecting the call by France to impose no-fly zone over Libya so that Gaddafi would not commit genocide should not come as a surprise. No wonder people around the world despise the morally bankrupt government of the U.K. that sells weapons to genocidal dictators like Gaddafi of Libya and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.
(Guardian) — Nicolas Sarkozy is leading the calls for a NATO-imposed no-fly zone to be enforced over Libya to “prevent the use of that country’s warplanes against [its] population”.
Sarkozy, the current president of the G8 and G20 economic forums, has also called for the European Union to impose sanctions against Libya and suggested that the assets of the family of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, should be frozen.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, did not join the calls for a no-fly zone, but David Cameron held out the prospect of imposing sanctions on Libya if Gaddafi continued to respond to the protests with violence. The government is wary of antagonizing the Libyan leadership while it attempts to repatriate British citizens.
In an interview with al-Jazeera television in Doha, the prime minister said: “Sanctions are always an option for the future if what we are seeing in Libya continues. Of course, if Libya continues down this path, there will be a very strong argument [for sanctions].”
Cameron’s remarks appeared to be a hardening of his position from earlier in the day, when he sidestepped questions about whether he would endorse the French president’s call for sanctions.
But the prime minister moved to play down the prospect of military action against Libya, saying: “I do not think we are at that stage yet. We are at the stage of condemning the actions Colonel Gaddafi has taken against his own people.”
It is likely the British attitude towards a no-fly zone will toughen if and when its citizens are evacuated.
The government is also concerned that Russia and China could veto a no-fly zone at the United Nations security council, leaving the international community weakened.
Demands for a ban on flights over Libya have been made by Ibrahim al-Dabashi, the country’s deputy ambassador to the UN, who is among diplomats who have abandoned Gaddafi.
He said the measure would prevent mercenaries, weapons and other supplies from reaching Gaddafi and his security forces. There have also been fears that Gaddafi could resort to bombing his own people.
Hague said he was canceling a planned trip to Washington to handle the crisis from London, adding that it would be difficult to get a security council resolution. The council has, though, made a statement condemning Libya’s actions.
Hague stressed he wanted an international inquiry into possible war crimes, saying this represented the best chance to stop murder and atrocities by the regime. “They will be held to account. They should hear that message loud and clear,” he said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the former foreign secretary Lord Owen became the first British politician to call for a no-fly zone, adding that the west should be concerned about the possibility that Gaddafi would unleash chemical weapons.
“We know that this is a person who could unleash either chemical or biological weapons, which he possibly still has. He is one of the worst despots we have seen for many a century. He is deeply unstable, and has been for 42 years,” Owen said.
He called for a UN charter chapter 7 intervention – meaning the authorization of military and non-military means to “restore international peace and security” – to be enforced by Nato air forces with Egyptian military support to demonstrate regional backing for the effort.
He argued a no-fly zone similar to the one imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 was feasible and wholly desirable. He said he believed the US would already have put its planes on alert.
Sarkozy went further than any other leading EU politician in calling for military action. “The continuing brutal and bloody repression against the Libyan civilian population is revolting,” he said. ” The international community cannot remain a spectator to these massive violations of human rights.”
The scale of the threat to world security was underlined by reports suggesting Gaddafi had ordered the destruction of oilfields, as well as the growing likelihood that he was willing to see a massive death toll rather than relinquish power.
The Temporal Sign and Demand of Society: Legitimacy of Political Power
A leader exercises power of leadership and service on a particular society. The power he/she has can be legitimate or otherwise. The legitimacy of the power of a leader comes from the people. If not from the people then the power is illegitimate.
A legitimate leader therefore has to be a person amongst the people not somebody who is outside of them, who has a better vision, established and derivable wisdom and virtues and an intrinsic courage that analyzes and understands problems of the society ahead and deliver solutions in an optimal time-shortest time possible. He/she leads the people by providing convincing methods and delivering solutions to problems the society faces in the right and progressive direction. No legal citizen should live in pain and die for a survival of an illegal leader but instead a leader has to live in pain and die for the survival of a legal individual citizen. The immediate concerns and jobs of a leader is to serve the society, not be served by society. He/she is an employee of the society not employing the society and make the society live under his/her mercy. Their power to lead the country is legitimate when it is given by the society. By the time they defy the society, develop contempt to the people and rule by their own will, then they changed the country into their real estate and the society into their own workers. That is the beginning of dictatorship, timocracy, oligarchy, etc, any form of illegal government. Once relations get sour and reach to that stage, leaders lose the legitimacy of their power and receive the rant of the society and ultimately lose their political achievements they have done in their legitimate times. The consequences are catastrophic to them to their family members and great descendants- they all be in the eternal fire of history. Therefore, a leader has to be wise enough to know and listen the society and its will as to when he/she should finish a tenure of service so that they end their power as legitimate and the good things they have done during their legitimate times remain as an eternal candle of history to the society.
Good leaders create administrative structures so that the people get conditions/or resources of life, happiness and freedom in minimal obstacles by providing effective leadership on all levels of their government structures . In order these things to be implemented, there has to be a common space of understanding between the people and the leaders. The people should give time to elected leaders as to when and how they have to come up with solutions to the common social, economic and political problems that they have promised to do so. But at the same time leaders should know that life is short and ephemeral and solutions they promised have to be delivered on time and if that does not happen, then they have to give a path way and in fact invite and solicit the people to elect other new leaders who are capable of understanding the scope and magnitude of the problems and promise to address the issues in a better and short time frame. After all governments are highest forms of social gatherings or structures of a particular society, established to take care of common welfare of the people and therefore cannot behave as an outside power but appended to the people from above for all time.
The protests that are happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and across the middle east are clear indicators of society running out of patience in living and carrying problems indefinitely, where society expresses outcry in multitudes to the extent of willing to die of their suffering by the hands common people who happened to be on the pinnacle of power and place of the leadership but unable to deliver anything for the society. Inability is not a sin by itself but not willing to give the place for others who are capable is the political sin. In times where society express suffrage and anger , governments should behave as part of the society and ask an apology from the society and express their willingness to leave office by arranging conditions in order problems be addressed.
Leaders should know and it is to their benefit that they feel and remain part of the society when they were in power and when they are out of power. They have to do their utmost effort to live within the society and contribute more when they are out of power but taking care of their family. It is always possible for them to be listened, heard and contribute more to their people as long as they are alive and as long as they finish legally. That is the right way to stay in politics for life long—not by hanging on power for life. These problems of appetite for hanging on power for life time are common in what are called developing or underdeveloped countries , where leaders take counties as their real estates and the society as employees in their firms — while it is non-existent in developed countries.
The consequences are sever and catastrophic not only for such bad leaders but to their all family members. There is no dictator who left power by will and allow his family members live in peace instead they make all their lifelong happiness and achievements be destroyed forever by angry society and unforgiving history. It is amazing why leaders cannot see that and make their immediate family members, children and grand children pay a price for their selfish and ill advised desire of power for life. All dictators disappear along with their descendants for ever from their society while wise leaders remain political advisors and important figures to their own society. Their descendants remain beloved society members living a good life within their own society, proud of the political works their parents have done and the recognition received by the society and history.
It is therefore the sign and demand of the time that leaders of countries irrespective of under-developed/developing, should be willing to do exactly what politically developed world leaders do:
* Put time frame for a political life-tenure in their constitution.
* Make sure their political power is legitimate.
* Know the difference between a country and real estate. It is only in real estate that individual citizens have lifelong rights to own it and live in it.
* Leave office when people demand and cry of their ineffectiveness.
* Leave office when problems remain unsolved on time and beyond.
* During turmoil times within society ( governments unwilling to yield their power from demand of society), then the police force and army should not always play as killing inanimate partners of illegitimate governments that run amuck and put their very own citizens, who give legitimacy to their power beneath their foot, but instead to carry out their responsibility by keeping the security and safety of the society in general and the rights of the people untouched.
It is only when this happens that the old style of removing governments by guns will stop and a modern and civilized political life begins which is a building block of stability, growth and social development.
The Woyanne ambassador says that his regime did not send mercenaries to Libya. But the evidence is indisputable. Members of the Federal Police, Meles Zenawi’s personal death squad, have been sent to Libya wearing their own standard issue uniform as this photo shows. The dead soldier in the photo is wearing the distinct Ethiopian Federal Police uniform. The Federal Police soldiers were indiscriminately shooting down Ethiopian civilians following the May 2005 elections, the same way as they are shooting down Libyan civilians now. Ethiopians have first hand experience of how brutal and barbaric Meles Zenawi’s death squads are.