The topic of this post is probably the same as those in all journalistic writings all over the world: Muammar Gaddafi, former leader of Libya, has been caught and killed. The Libyan revolution is over, probably the last stage of the Arab spring, at least for the time being.
Just over 8 months after the protesting began in Libya, it seems that the fighting is over and Libyans can start rebuilding their country. This will be a massive undertaking and definitely outside the scope of this post. What I want to write about is a sideline to the main story.
It is totally amazing that within hours or perhaps minutes of the former leader's capture, videos of the undertaking started appearing on YouTube. Footage from phones somehow found their way online, depicting the last few minutes or hours of a person's life and the degrading way of how the man met his fate. By now, the death has been confirmed and more of these videos are surfacing by the minute. The more I see, the more I am disgusted.
I am not saying Gaddafi was a fine example of decent human behaviour and probably would have deserved being executed after his capture. What I fail to understand is that despite all the wrong a person could have done in his/her life, there remains a basic, minimum threshold of humanity which still needs to be respected. A person close to death does not deserve such maltreatment and humiliation and, what is worse, a dead person should not be thrown on a street, trampled upon or stripped naked. The Libyans were right to get rid of a man who treated people like animals but it seems that they have not learnt the lesson and are doing it all over again.
I only trust that the Arab spring was not, in fact, an autumn. In any case, so long, Colonel.
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