Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Revolution of Benghazi: First dynamite, now words

Benghazi is the first city in Libya, where the inhabitants have taken power. During the fighting in Tripoli still, people here have put the period after the revolution - and organize what none of them really knows: democracy. Japer Salem is a small man with a too large horn-rimmed glasses, but when he speaks, the men running the snot out of his nose, crying women and children are beginning to hold up their cell phones to record his every word.


For whether Salem Japer be small, they say, and have a large horn-rimmed glasses, but when he talks, then talk to the heart. On the eighth day of the revolution, a Friday, Salem Japer speaks in central Benghazi, Libya, where the uprising began there. The amount is so large that no one whom you ask, can remember having seen so many people in the city.

And certainly no one can recall that has been here ever talked about freedom. For this one would be sent to prison in the past 42 years. Salem Japer has often talked about freedom and he was often in prison. The fact that he is still alive is probably only because he is a man of God and the famous Imam of the city.

From his seat on stage, it almost looks as if the whole world is made of people, as behind the crowd is only a tank that sits on the gun barrel of a boy, a gray sky and the sea. He says that this revolution is blessed and that it was their revolution, and that it was good that they were finally taken to the streets.

For far too long they had suffered under the tyrant, and far too long they have remained patient with him as he filled their prisons, tortured their souls and shed their blood have. For 42 years. As he speaks his voice is hoarse, but you still hear him well, so it is quiet on the pitch.

Gaddafi had destroyed the country, he says. And what is worse, the reputation of their country. And what they have to show the world now, is that they are united and want their freedom and democracy, as in other countries. He continues to talk, and people on the pitch stretch their hands up and shout: Allah is great.

Then they flocked to see him, and he is swept away by the sheer size, twelve hours sings about their liberation. "We are all the same" someone has written on a building at the edge of the square with big black letters. Two floors above the paper rejects a young man at the window, and when asked who he was, he says, his name was Ahmed Sanalla, was 26 and an amateur in terms of revolution.

Although he knew how to burn out a police station, captured a military base, and from a chair, three fire extinguishers and an old metal pipe balanced a satellite dish in order to twitter news revolution. But much more he knew not to do so. Actually he is a medical student for five years and prefers to play baseball.

Ahmed was present when the Katiba fell, the biggest camp of the military and the seat of Gadaffi, when he lived in the city. Inside, behind the four meter high walls endured thousands of soldiers with anti-aircraft guns, tanks and grenade launchers. Outside was an angry town butcher knives and explosives, the men usually use the only catch the fish.

Ahmed tells stories of young people who were with knives to soldiers, construction workers who loaded their truck with explosives and set up against the walls and by a trustee, who filled his trunk with four cylinders and thus went against the main gate in the hail of bullets. Is it possible to govern a city committee? One might dismiss the stories like an exaggeration, but it goes to the Katiba - then stand there's the truck and the burned car of the man behind the main gate, and in the hospital, young people are with their bullet holes, and in conscious, show you the videos on their mobile phones.

Except Salwa Bugaigis. For the knew that her job only now begins. Salwa Bugaigis is a lawyer, but her friends say in jest, she and her family were the new Gaddafi in the city. When the protests started, they wanted to eat with her husband in the canteen of the court to noon. But for that it never came.

Because she had the feeling that if no one ruled the city more, someone should organize something. For example, to care to collect all the weapons again. "Earlier, when the police were still there, there was a lot more crime than it is now" why did Salwa and her husband in court, and she called her sister, the Kiefernorthopädin, and her brother, a civil engineer, and since they all can speak well and know many influential people, they have organized this city anyway.

14 committee they have formed a transitional government of the city, for the banks and hospitals, for schools and for the military. If you Salwa replied that a city can hardly rule by committee, then smiles, and seems to suggest that. If it is asked who was responsible for now, then she says: the people.

Because people actually brought back their weapons in the mosque and in the temporary City Hall, though certainly not all, says Salwa. They stood by their banks, as it was said that Gaddafi would send troops in order to get the money. Because the money belongs to Gadaffi's not, but them.

A few hundred students to regulate traffic at night and say that they had previously helped no stranger, but now already. And that earlier, when the police was still there, many more crimes had happened, as now. There is a noise from which the city comes down slowly. But where does the noise? Salem Japer says: So that we again can be proud of his country. Sanalla Ahmed says: Therefore, that power belongs to people again.

No comments:

Post a Comment