False ending: Muammar Gaddafi is dead but the women of Libya remain fearful
sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com
“I was one of the few women who went out to the first protest in Tripoli on 22 February, and shortly after that I joined 17 February Youth Coalition, a rebel group. We had a medical section, a communications section and later, of course, a military cell,” says Mounia Al Saghir. She is 22, veiled, soft-spoken and fearless – a student, NGO worker and now a revolutionary.
We speak on 20 October, the evening of Muammar Gaddafi’s death. Mounia says she is “overwhelmed”, but she speaks calmly and steadily to describe her work for the Youth Coalition. She began on a guerrilla propaganda campaign, organising high-risk publicity stunts designed to prove that despite the bloody suppression of Tripoli’s February uprising, the opposition movement was alive and unrepentant. Red, black and green balloons were released over Tripoli’s skyline, opposition flags unfurled from high buildings and Gaddafi posters set alight in crowded public spaces.
When the military cell formed, the group’s attention shifted. One female member helped organise a failed assassination attempt on Saif al Islam Gaddafi in July. She was later arrested, imprisoned and mercifully released, but not without suffering appalling abuse. “They electrocuted her, they beat her, she had 16 broken bones. She didn’t drink, she didn’t eat anything,” Mounia says quietly.
Mounia too had a narrow escape after smuggling videos and instruction manuals abroad. When a police car pulled up outside her home, she was forced to spend a month in hiding while her father was repeatedly interrogated by secret services. “I was terrified, I thought they would beat or torture him,” she says.
Her voice only falters once, when she describes why she joined the rebels. Her friend Ahmed had told her about the initial anti-government protests planned for the 17 February, but on the 11 February Ahmed was arrested. He died in prison. Only one of the thirty men in his cell survived to confirm the deaths. “So I joined because I had to,” she explains. “For my friends who were killed, for me, for everyone who wanted to and didn’t know how.”