November 30, 2011
THE news has it that Saif al-Islam was arrested in Libya without being brutally killed like other members of his family. The media have published gory and offensive images of the killing of his father and former Libyan leader, Muammar Ghaddafi without warning for discretion.
Viewers, including children, have been treated to disgusting, sickening and barbaric display of how Gaddafi met his untimely death after he was brutalised, slapped, tortured, sodomized with a knife (gay-like) and shot with bullets. His body was later dragged on the road and kicked by a jeering and cheering crowd of rebels.
Those displays happened in Arab countries, by Arabs against their Arab leaders, they had pretended to adore while in power. Would that fate also befall Saif Al-Islam now in custody?
A similar incident had occurred almost five years ago when graphic video clips of Saddam hanging in Bagdad in December 2006, on the day Muslims were celebrating the Eid- Adha, were beamed in the mainstream media. The video also showed how Iraqi officials at the gallows were mocking and taunting their former leader before and after the execution. His sons and a grandchild had earlier been killed during a combat with US troops.
What happened in Libya represent worst scenarios of an Arab country in the African continent. The unethical practice of the media in publishing the images and the immoral behaviours of the rebel-killers who took delight in those savageries are not only shameful but abominable acts.
More worrisome is the fact that the media refuse to adhere to journalistic ethics as they deliberately refuse to advise their viewers and readers’ discretion on the graphic images of a bloodied Ghaddafi. Such explicitly violent images not only offend and disturb feeling and sensitive of children and adult who believe in human dignity, they are distasteful as they traumatized our human feeling.
The press exhibit imperialist barbarism as the images perpetuate the de-valuing of human life and cheapen the essence of humanity. For all the offence Ghaddafi must have allegedly committed, the barbaric display of Arabs won him sympathy from Africans like me.
Writing a piece entitled, "Saddam Hanging and the Humiliation of Arab World", immediately after the execution of Saddam in December 2006, I clearly stated that: "The Arab world may unconsciously start to dig their own grave by giving tacit support for the invasion of their region, where foreign troops are fully armed and stationed.
It is now easier for their nations to be forced and fall into the so-called Western liberalization and democratization, probably like that of Iraqis as we have witnessed so far. Afterall, apart from Egypt, most Arab nations in the region are ruled by kings who own the assets and properties in their kingdoms".
While America was the major arrowhead in the extermination of Saddam and other victims in Iraq, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, forces comprising Britain, Italy, France and Germany, led and directed the assaults in connivance with the rebels in the name of National Transitional Council, NTC, for massacre and destructions in Libya.
The allegation used against Saddam by President George Bush of America was that Iraq harboured Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMD, as the excuse for the invasion. The accusation was later discovered to be based on blatant falsehood. In the case of Libya, NATO claimed they were enforcing no-fly-zone mandate of United Nations against Gaddafi forces only for the NATO aircraft to unleash blistering airstrikes with lives and properties destroyed in Libya. The last attacks on Gaddafi’s convoy were from NATO’s aircraft.
It is glaring the hypocrisy and culpability of Arab leaders who had remained silent and nonchalant during the political imbroglios in the Arab countries. I find rather shocking the gullibility of the Arab citizens of those countries who at one time praised the leaders and at another turned around singing new songs through the influence of Western forces and their mainstream media.
The Western media and their leaders know how to crucify perceived enemies through orchestrated campaigns of calumny and threats, including the arm-twisting of the United Nations towards unprovoked attacks on powerless countries.
While Gaddafi had his weaknesses, a common attribute of most ambitious leaders in Africa and Arab countries, his people nevertheless were better off, compared with other countries in terms of living standard. Information gathered from reliable sources, including fortunate returnees from the war-torn country, Gaddafi was reported to rule Libya without external debts and had in foreign reserves over $150 billion which was globally frozen.
The cost of war by NATO and other countries could be defrayed from the frozen funds considering the over $2 billion of US and NATO’s military contributions to the attacks.
As at 2010, Libya ranked 53rd on the Human Development Index (out of 170 UN member states), making it a "high human development" country and one of the richest in the world in terms of GDP per capita – with a living standard higher than that of Japan. His legacies include the right to free education and post-graduate studies, at home and abroad.
A quarter of Libyans have a university degree while literacy rate for adult and youths were very high as well as gross primary school enrolment ratio for boys and girls which in 2009 was above 90 per cent. There is free health care; interest-free housing loans; free land for farmers; highly subsidized electricity tariffs, fuel price and food items like loaves of bread.
The Gaddafi government also subsidized the cost of buying cars as well as tractors for its citizens in a country where the newlyweds receive special allowance from the government for housing, while a mother who gave birth received similar allowances to take care of the baby.
In the government’s oil-profit sharing scheme, every Libyan got $500 in their account every year – from the national income.
Mr. YUSHAU SHUAIB, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Abuja.
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