Third Anniversary of regime change in Libya

The “regime change” in various countries of the world, in the name of “defending democracy” and “human rights”, and waging “war against terrorism” carried out by US imperialism and its allies is aimed at bringing these countries under their complete domination.

The “regime change” in various countries of the world, in the name of “defending democracy” and “human rights”, and waging “war against terrorism” carried out by US imperialism and its allies is aimed at bringing these countries under their complete domination. The countries which have been the victims of “regime change” have been hurled back into medieval times, while their natural resources are being plundered. This is what Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and many countries of Africa where the imperialists have organized such regime changes, reveal.

The present situation in Libya, three years after the regime change in that country confirms this. It must be recalled that the Anglo American imperialists carried out a concerted propaganda campaign vilifying Gaddafi, organized, financed, incited and armed various elements in Libyan state and society to spread anarchy and violence. These imperialist backed forces organized terrorist actions which were hailed as a “just struggle” by the imperialist governments and their media. On the other hand, the attempts of the Libyan government to put an end to the anarchy and violence were portrayed as violation of “human rights”. The brutal murder of the Libyan President, by the US imperialists and NATO forces and regime change in Libya was declared by NATO as “one of the most successful in NATO history.”

Three years ago, Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy of all countries, in Africa. It is now in deep chaos and anarchy, with its economy in ruin. The nation building exercise in Libya, which began with the overthrow of colonial rule of the Italian imperialists after the Second World War, has been reversed. Today Libya is a deeply divided society, with various “militias”, created and supported by the Anglo American imperialists and their NATO allies, running parallel governments in different regions of the country. Widespread rape, assassinations and torture, terrorist and sectarian massacres, migrant trafficking to neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, are the order of the day.

During the period of nation building, which lasted over 40 years, the nationalized oil wealth of Libya was utilized by the Libyan government to ensure significant improvement in the living standards of the masses of people. They enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now three years after the NATO intervention, the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse. Thousands of Filipino and Indian health workers have been forced to flee the country. Several institutions of higher education have been forced to shut down. Electricity black outs are a common occurrence in the capital Tripoli.

Women in Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and enjoy an income of their own. More than half of the university students in Libya were women. Women workers were guaranteed equal pay for equal work under the law. Today, three years after the NATO intervention, women’s rights in Libya are under severe attack, as various sectarian agencies created and nurtured by US imperialism and its allies claim control over different parts of the country and try to drag the people back into the most reactionary and medieval forms of oppression and inequality.

Libya is of great strategic importance for the US imperialists to control this region. It is situated at the nodal point of Africa and Europe. The objective of the Anglo American intervention in Libya in 2011 was clearly not to help the Libyan people, but to gain control of Libya’s natural resources and prevent that country from becoming a focal point for African unity against imperialist forces. The attempts of the Gaddafi regime to build a strong United States of Africa that could withstand the imperialist pressures – these were roadblocks to the strategic designs of US imperialism for control over that region. As a part of the NATO intervention, in August 2011, the US put a freeze on the economic assets of the Gaddafi government and confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which had been earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank.

The repeated military interventions by the US imperialists and their allies in the countries of West Asia and North Africa have been a source of fabulous profits for the American military-industrial complex. The arming of various agencies in these countries by the US imperialists to destabilize the ruling regimes, the NATO wars of intervention, have all meant huge-scale sales of military equipment, i.e. billions of dollars of profits for the American defense monopolies. Hundreds of US military bases have been built, which also mean billions of dollars of profits for these companies.

Criminalisation of international justice

The NATO ordered indictment of Muammar Gadaffi by the International Criminal Court (ICC) during the NATO attack on Libya in 2011 served the Anglo American imperialists in their propaganda to justify the aggression, the overthrow of the government headed by him and his subsequent assassination.

The ICC is a weapon in the hands of the US imperialists. War criminals like George Bush and Barrack Obama, Tony Blair, and others cannot and are not prosecuted by the ICC. These war criminals have organized the massacre of lakhs of people all over the world and destroyed entire nations. The ICC is a tool to persecute those whom the US imperialists and their allies decide to demonise as villains. The media controlled by the Anglo American imperialists reinforces this propaganda. The leaders of various countries where the imperialists are organizing regime change are portrayed as mass murderers, while the imperialists organizing massacres to justify regime change are portrayed as champions of human and democratic rights.

The leaders prosecuted by the ICC include Gaddafi of Libya, Milosevic of Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Charles Taylor of Liberia, Jean Kambanda of Rwanda, Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, Bashir of Sudan and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya. There are moves to prosecute Russian President Putin in the ICC.

An account of the attempt by the US imperialists to subvert justice in the trials carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), by the defence lawyer of a General of the Rwandan army, Augustin Ndidiliyimana, indicted for his alleged role in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, brings this out very clearly. Between April and July 1994, nearly 500,000 – 1,000,000 Rwandans (approximately 20% of that country’s population) were killed in a genocidal mass slaughter targeted against specific tribal communities. The genocide was organized by the US imperialists and their allies, in an effort to overthrow the existing regime that had become a roadblock to the realization of their plans for conquest and exploitation of the natural resources of the Congo. Following the massacre, the US and its allies set up the puppet Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government by organizing the murder of the President and the overthrow of the existing regime.

General Ndidiliyimana was arrested because he had refused to cooperate with the RPF and knew too much about the real role played by the American and UN forces in the genocide. The methods used in the trial were outright criminal, as is evident from the account. The General and his defence counsel were not even shown a copy of the indictment on the basis of which he had been arrested. Agents of the US administration and armed forces tried to make a deal with the defence lawyer to produce false testimony, and even threatened him with dire consequences for refusing to “cooperate”.

The accused was kept in solitary confinement and tortured, in an attempt to break him down psychologically. The trial dragged on for nearly 14 years. The witnesses for the prosecution were people who had been jailed and tortured for many years by the agencies of the imperialists. The judges appointed to the tribunal on recommendation of the US administration and the UN authorities, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to these criminal methods used. After nearly 14 years, the general was convicted on blatantly trumped up charges.

The objective of such tribunals is to justify, through blatantly criminal methods and lying propaganda carried out by the imperialist controlled media, the attempts of the US imperialists to expand their hegemony and control over West Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, by overthrowing existing regimes and breaking up and destroying entire nations and peoples. The present day activities of the US imperialists and their NATO allies in Iraq and Syria must be seen and understood in this light.

Only the united resistance of the people can challenge the attempts of the US imperialists to subjugate whole nations and peoples and expand their control and domination over more and more regions of the world. We cannot afford to have any illusion about the UN, the international tribunals, etc. which only serve to justify and glorify the real war criminals, the US imperialists and their agencies, while criminalising and persecuting all those regimes and forces which try to challenge the US imperialist designs.

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