On February 17, Libya will mark the first anniversary of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. But journalist Lizzie Phelan notes that millions of Libyans will be commiserating, and not celebrating, on the date.

­“I think that very few people inside Libya, and many of those who have been forced to flee since the NATO and rebel invasion of Tripoli, will actually be celebrating today” she told RT. “Many thousands – if not millions – of people will be commiserating and commemorating the beginning of the destruction of their country, which began more or less a year ago.”

Phelan noted that Libya currently has no government, saying that the National Transitional Council is nothing more than a media show.

“There are hundreds of militias that control different parts of the country. And Muammar Gaddafi and the former Libyan government always warned that this would happen.”

She cited numerous examples of human rights violations by the NTC and its local councils, including the jailing of the country’s former representative to the UN as well as two philosophers for supporting Gaddafi.

“Just a few days ago, for example, in Misrata, the heads of the Misrata NTC announced that they would hold local elections there. And astonishingly, they named 50,000 people who would be allowed to participate in this election. And this is really a tiny proportion of the population of Misrata; its population is approximately half a million,” Phelan noted. She added that this sign of elections in a post-Gaddafi Libya, along with a bevy of other examples, doesn’t bode well for the West’s promises of democracy following the end of Gaddafi rule.

Source - http://rt.com/news/libya-anniversary-celebration-phelan-541/

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