Libya: Post Qaddafi

The first piece is a video about Tawfik Bensaud, a 18 year old who was assassinated for promoting democracy in Libya through social media sites, such as Twitter. This reminded me of the chapter that we read in Battle for the Arab Spring that covered social media. Although social media is revolutionary as it allows people to display their points of view to millions of viewers, people in Libya are still in fear of their lives, even though freedom was what they wanted in the first place.

The second article, “Libya: ‘Rule of the gun’ amid mounting war crimes by rival militias,” is similar to the first piece. The article describes the human rights violations that are rampant in Libya. Many Libyans have been killed, tortured, and detained based on their origins or perceived political allegiances.Many of those abducted told Amnesty International they were tortured,beaten with plastic tubes, sticks, metal bars or cables, given electric shocks, suspended in stress positions for hours, kept blindfolded and shackled for days, deprived of food and water, and forced to endure poor sanitary conditions.
These two articles make me wonder if it is necessary for countries to seek developmental efforts to preserve culture. The culture that some people belong to are violent and seriously threatening. Why would a person want to preserve such a culture? And there is also a theme with these radical extremist groups: they feel threatened by globalization and homogeneity because they are afraid of a changing world. These groups are forcing culture on people who want to escape the culture.