A death in Benghazi

June 27, 2014

A DEATH IN BENGHAZI: SALWA BUGAIGHIS

POSTED BY JON LEE ANDERSONOn June 25th, in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, the lawyer and democracy activist Salwa Bugaighis was killed, bringing despair to those who knew her. Bugaighis, a bright, funny, courageous woman, fifty years old, was fighting for a democratic, open society. Along with her husband, Issam, and her sister Iman, she was at the forefront of the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi; later, she sat on the hastily declared transitional council that sought to bring order to the excited anarchy that followed Qaddafi’s fall.As that anarchy turned to bedlam, Bugaighis worked to reconcile Libya’s feuding groups—even as her life was threatened, and as other critics of the militias were murdered. She had been spending time abroad, because of such threats, but came home for the elections.Yesterday, just after she returned from voting in parliamentary elections, gunmen surprised her at her house and shot her to death. Issam, who was abducted in the incident, is still missing. A Libyan friend of Bugaighis told me, “I am shocked beyond words. Sometimes I think that we just fucked up by removing Qaddafi—that I would rather live under a dictator and not worry about the safety of my family.”Every revolution begins with the hope of a better life—however the revolutionaries interpret that phrase. But in the ugliest conflicts the fighters can become so degraded by violence that killing for professed ideals—usually God, fatherland, or some mixture of the two—comes to be an end in itself, a perverse validation of purpose. I kill, therefore I am. Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time with people who joined revolutions in the belief that their efforts, even their sacrifice, might bring about a better life for all. Many of them have been tortured, thrown in prison, gunned down, stabbed—in some cases by other would-be revolutionaries.It has been nearly three years since Muammar Qaddafi’s regime collapsed, after months of fitful combat between his militias and a patchwork army of students, shopkeepers, and jihadis who gathered to depose him. Like the other protest movements of the Arab Spring, the Libyan uprising was inspired by the ouster of the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali, and by the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt. Most of those revolts did not end well. Just as Egypt’s revolution has been hijacked by the same military that upheld Mubarak’s corrupt power, Libya’s revolution, too, has come asunder. Ever since Qaddafi died—run to ground, in October of 2011, by a mob of fighters who stabbed, beat, and shot him—Libya has degenerated into murderous chaos, with dozens of armed militia groups competing for turf and power, and a central government too weak to impose the rule of law.As the revolution was just gathering force, Bugaighis’s brother-in-law, a businessman named Mustafa Gheriani, had recently returned to Benghazi after years of émigré life in Michigan. He was cautiously optimistic, but also fretful. “The people here are looking to the West, not to some kind of socialist or other extreme system—that’s what we had here before,” he told me. “But, if they become disappointed with the West, they may become easy prey for extremists.” Gheriani said that the new Libyan state would be led not by angry mobs or by religious extremists but by “Western-educated intellectuals,” like him. It was his version of a better life, and even then it was hard to imagine it coming true. As I wrote in 2011, “Whether this was wishful thinking, of which there has been a great deal here in recent weeks, was uncertain. After forty-two years of Muammar Qaddafi—his cruelty, his megalomaniacal presumptions of leadership in Africa and the Arab world, his oracular ramblings—Libyans didn’t know what their country was, much less what it would be.”They still don’t. But with the murder of Salwa Bugaighis they may now have a better, and sadder, idea.Above: Salwa Bugaighis in Tripoli, Libya, March, 2014. Photograph: National Dialogue Preparatory Commission/AP.

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From my perspective, reflections from reading this article and many other about a woman I had never even met - Salwa

P.S. This just made a little more real, what friends are experiencing in their home country. Just made it a little scary to voice out and support injustices, if I may call it that. Globalisation does equal to global friendship...I believe eventually the support for global peace. When I met her, she was just another girl in another country like I was. The first day we were in a lift together. She was with a whole lot of other girls, with their heads and faces covered. The only way to distingush them, was one looked like an elderly lady with creased and wrinkled eyes, pushing a much younger woman in a wheelchair. The other ladies had different body sizes and style of 'scarves'. The second day I met her, she liked out my outfit.  Mama Africa, African woman, almost in song, so exuberant....I thought wow! She is excited. As the days went by, we met casually and reminded each other about the days that followed and little small chats we had. Conversations happened, we are young, we celebrated our youth - nothing out of the ordinary but boundaries were clearly visible in terms of where we all came from. For some unknown reason by which people click, connect and just connect, friendships were formed. Although we all, a good 200 plus people, went back to our different countries, some business networks were created as well as future friendships. I must be honest Libya, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, USA, Mauritius,  etc were all just countries on the map. Some up in Africa where the people were generally much lighter than the fellow Africans down South; some were places so so notorious for drug trafficking;  some places where soccer stars come from; some places where the rich and famous go for exotic holidays! Until I met these people, all just human beings, so lovely, so kind, filled with dreams and aspirations. Most of us drank alcohol, some smoked - but hey, we all danced and connected. Our dreams and aspirations were all centred around making the world a better place, for all, one way or the other. When I came home, I realised that people live in these countries, real people and some pre-conceived ideas were broken down and dismantled. What also was made real, was that war exists. Unrest, bombs and innocent people do die! Things changed. Another bomb or story of a genocide no longer became part of the news - where you always wonder why the hell are they fighting and wait for another day for an even bigger number of deaths. A bomb dropped in Libya make me wonder if my friend is safe; makes me wonder if we will meet again when Huan is elected president in his country; makes me wonder if we will share the news of Hassim being elected as mayor in his town; makes me wonder if we will share news of getting lost and seeing all sorts of things unmentionable to society except if you were lost too and saw the same things we all saw, with jaws dropping with sheer horror from such amusement; makes me wonder of our little open secretes we shared in a cab in all our foreign countries' land - where just for a comfortable and invited time - we enjoyed being foreigners.