I felt ashamed for the Leaders in the African Union delegation as their vehicle was banged and kicked by Benghazi protestors as they entered the city on a peace mission.
In my heart I know that this would not have happened to a European delegation or to a visit from Rulers for Arabia.
Part of this disrespect has to do with Cyrenaican arrogance. They can't forget that they are the theocratic monarchists -- they are inherently superior, inherently in the right. Part of it is self-hatred. A denial of being African that is deep in the Cyrenaican culture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/11/libya-rebels-protest-peace-mission
Libyan rebels protest over African Union peace mission
Demonstrators dismiss peace mediators as Gaddafi allies and renew calls for Libyan leader to step down immediately
An African Union (AU) peace mission has received a frosty welcome in Benghazi, the de facto capital of the Libyan opposition, as rebel supporters insisted that Muammar Gaddafi relinquish power.
More than 1,000 demonstrators waved pre-Gaddafi flags and chanted slogans against the Libyan ruler outside a hotel in the city. They said they had little faith in the visiting mediators, who they said were mostly allies of Gaddafi who preached democracy for Libya but did not practise it at home.
……
"On the issue of Gaddafi and his sons, there is no negotiation," said Ahmed al-Adbor, a member of the opposition's transitional ruling council.
"The sons and the family of Gaddafi cannot participate in the political future of Libya," he added.
The meeting came hours after Nato air strikes hit Gaddafi's tanks, helping the rebels push back government troops who had been advancing towards Benghazi.
The AU's peace draft calls for an immediate ceasefire, co-operation in opening channels for humanitarian aid and the start of a dialogue between rebels and the government.
Eastern Libya has been the bastion of cultural Euro-centrism and Arabism in Libya. This is partly routed in the history of Cyrenaica as an outpost of Greek culture in ancient times but also of Benghazi as a prominent Arab slave-trade port on the Mediterranean. For centuries in Benghazi, the Arabs were allied with white Europeans in the trade of black Africans as slaves. Today, though most will deny it, the facts point to an endemic racism in Eastern Libya, commonly directed not only against migrant Black Africans, but also against darker-skinned Libyans, especially from the south of the country.
It is therefore not surprising that the Eastern opposition has been able to stoke flames of hatred of the Gaddafi regime for its open-borders immigration policies and the heavy investments of the Libya sovereign fund in project throughout Africa.
Libya’s immigration policies and worker-rights laws has not only brought many immigrants into Libya since the revolution but has allowed them rights that many natural-born Libyans oppose. Despite the fact the standard of living in Libya is the highest in Africa, many Cyrenaicans have bristled at investments in poorer African countries rather than in their own depressed townships.
In the current rebel uprising the first target of the militants have been black immigrants. Rumors abound of rape and killings directed at blacks.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/african-migrants-targeted-libyaFrom Al Jazeera
Anti-Khadafi forces have already killed hundreds of sub-Saharan Blacks, supposed because Black “mercenaries” are fighting for Khadafi. . . .
. . . angry mobs of anti-government protesters hunt down "black African mercenaries," according to witnesses.
Saad Jabbar, deputy director of the North Africa Centre at Cambridge University:
"I think it is urgent to do something about it now, otherwise, a genocide against anyone who has black skin and who doesn't speak perfect Arabic is possible.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNA8z5G-XmkHowever, this is not the first time Libya's most vulnerable immigrant population has fallen victim to racist attacks. In 2000, dozens of migrant workers from Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria were targeted during street killings when a government officials blamed them for rising crime, disease and drug trafficking.
Christian Bishop Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli has argued that the road to peace will not come through Europe, of the Arab league, but through the African Union: “IF we really want to find a diplomatic solution to the Libyan crisis, we need to go through the African Union. Its absence from the Conference in London disappointed me.”
http://www.africa-news.eu/component/content/article/43-african-news/2259-road-to-peace-in-libya-passes-through-african-union--bishop-martinelli.htmlBut the deep-seated suspicion of the African Union by the Eastern opposition and the deep racist tendency that has recently come to the fore, make it unlikely that the rebels we accept an AU mediation as long as the Western air power , Gulf largesse form Saudi, UAE and Qatar, and the promise of riches from control of the oil field sends the counter message that more killing will give them a better world.
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