Libyan journalist and politician Hassan Al-Amin: Corruption was disguised during the days of Gaddafi, and today it has become public

Rashid Khashana – From politics to journalism, then to culture, Hassan Al-Amin was a witness to the changes that occurred in the Libyan political and cultural scenes, first as a member of the “General National Congress” (a constituent body) before he resigned from it, and then as editor-in-chief of the “Saqifa” literary portal. . The revolution allowed Al-Amin and thousands of refugees abroad to return to Libya after thirty years in exile, during which he founded the “Libya Future” portal. However, in this dialogue, he warns of a significant decline in the field of freedoms, and the waste of huge sums of money due to corruption, which he said was disguised during the days of Gaddafi and has become public today. The conversation started with this question:

■ Today, eleven years have passed since the February 17 uprising, in which you participated. How would you describe it: Did it achieve its goals, even partially, or did it deviate from the first “revolutionary” project that it preached?
■ The primary goal of the February 17, 2011 uprising was to overthrow a regime that had perched on the hearts of Libyans for four decades. There were decades of imprisonment, torture and executions, in addition to the deterioration of the economic, health and educational situation. The wealth, in a rich oil country, was not allocated to building a new Libya. Rather, huge sums of money were spent on projects that had nothing to do with Libya, such as the Irish Republican Army and the Nicaraguan Revolution. The revolution then came to put an end to this system, and it achieved this goal. It also succeeded in electing the first elected Libyan parliament, despite everything that happened there later. We also cannot deny what the revolution achieved in terms of freedom of expression, as Libyans began speaking on satellite channels and the media became free after breaking its restrictions.

■ But many mistakes occurred after that, and the train derailed, so who bears responsibility?
■ Everyone: parties, civil society, and armed groups outside the state…

■ You are also an official as a member of the General National Congress, right?
■ First, when I returned to Libya after spending many years abroad, an experience that lasted thirty years, I had one goal, which was to contribute to the establishment of a free, independent and responsible media, an effective civil society, support human rights issues in Libya, and work to create institutions that serve rights and freedoms.
Secondly, I did not have in mind to run for office, but rather it was something I was prompted to do, after a number of friends convinced me that the legislative institution we are dealing with is a constituent structure and not a vehicle for exercising power, meaning that its goal is to lay the foundation for the new Libya and determine the rules of the game, and then let the competitors compete. But unfortunately, when the members of the General National Congress were elected, they did not take into account the meaning of a transitional period, so they exceeded the tasks that they were elected to carry out. There were those who talked about a subway in Tripoli and those who spoke about prohibiting usury and other positions that made the conference lose its credibility, and they did not In return, it works to end the presence of armed groups. From here, these groups began to dominate political decisions, and we saw what happened in the case of the political isolation of men from the previous regime, based on an exclusionary law. Thus, I came to the conclusion that I, as an independent member, was not in the “National Conference” due to the exacerbation of political polarization and the avoidance of confronting basic issues. So I resigned from the conference because I wanted to speak freely, without the authority imposing its pressure on me, and I decided to return to my field, namely rights and media, in particular. These files need someone to talk about them with frankness and boldness.

■ There are currently reports of widespread violations and a significant decline in freedoms…
■ There is actually a significant decline in human rights issues, kidnapping, extrajudicial killings, and security prosecutions. There is also huge amounts of money that was wasted and is still being wasted in light of corruption, which was disguised during the days of Gaddafi and is now open.

■ Why did you not participate in the 2014 elections?
■ The situation was tense before those elections. The political and security conditions were unsuitable, and there was a problem with the electoral law. We accepted it in 2012, but it cannot be repeated. I point out here that the 2014 elections were preceded by events that predicted other problems to come, and we were monitoring the security clashes that occurred in Tripoli and other cities, and therefore we wished to postpone the elections until the hot issues, including voter rationalization and education, were dealt with. But unfortunately, things were done in a hurry, and therefore the turnout was not at the level of 2012. This was followed by a sharp tension between the National Congress, which was insisting that the handover and reception take place with the House of Representatives in Tripoli, and the new House of Representatives, which was refusing to take delivery in Tripoli. From here the disputes began, and it was clear that the National Congress had no real desire to hand over power. Parliament was also stubborn in its insistence on refusing to take over in Tripoli. All of these positions led to the deterioration of the general situation, opening a bloody page of political and military divisions.

■ Why were Libyan, Arab and foreign mediations unable to prevent a slide into military conflict?
■ True, there were internal mediations through councils of elders and tribal leaders, but they did not succeed, because they were mediations that lacked a real and clear vision for getting out of the crisis, and some of them came from parties with their own agenda. What further aggravated the crisis was international and regional intervention (Turkey, Egypt…), which made Libya an arena for proxy wars. In addition, the international community does not have a unified position towards the Libyan crisis, as the West is divided, and this division became clearer when the conflict intensified and we entered into new wars (Operation Dignity against Libya Dawn 2014) and the storming of Tripoli (2018). External interference was clear, whether through political or military support by providing weapons to the conflicting parties (France, Russia…) or by Egyptian aircraft bombing targets in Libya.

■ Let us return to your media career in the opposition. Why were you arrested during the Gaddafi era?
■ Originally, I am neither a media personality nor a journalist. I left Libya surreptitiously in 1983, after I was imprisoned while I was working at the Faculty of Education at the University of Benghazi, Al-Bayda branch. Members of the “Revolutionary Committees” invaded our college to “purge it of reactionaries and enemies of the revolution” and took me and my companions to prison. The period of detention was not long, but it demonstrated to me that the country was facing great persecution, so my release was an opportunity to contribute to informing the world about what was happening in Libya, especially after I was able to settle in London.

■ What was your plan?
■ My primary goal was to confront the oppressive regime by all available means, and to expose gross human rights violations in Libya. I joined one of the Libyan opposition factions, and after a short period I resigned from organizational work, and decided to continue as an independent activist. Hence the media option. In our struggle with the regime, our voice must reach the Libyans in one way or another. In this context, the newspaper “Libya Al-Mustaqbal” came, and my goal was not to enter the world of Her Majesty, but rather to document and publicize the regime’s violations of human rights, and to communicate our voice to Libyans at home, as media work was imposed by the nature of the struggle work at that time.

■ When was that?
■ At the end of 2003, we created an electronic website open to all Libyan dissidents and writers in the diaspora, and it became a news source, as we received news from inside, and we published periodic reports on the situation in Libya and covered the activities of the Libyan opposition.

■ Who was behind determining the project’s destination?
■ The site did not have a political or ideological line, I am not affiliated, and the idea was clear, which was to end the persecution in Libya. When dealing with reports or opinion articles, we published for everyone. The only thing we did not allow was defending the dictatorship. We had leftist, Islamist, and liberal writers, and we did not prevent publication because of the writer’s orientation.

■ During that period, who was the decision-maker around Gaddafi, in your opinion: the family or the men of the apparatus?
■ The box is the box of the colonel or “commander,” as the system was an individual system. Perhaps in recent years some forces have begun to come to light, but they were not far from Gaddafi. There are decisions made that were wrong, including in the last moments, because he does not listen, or because the entourage does not tell him the truth. Libya was ruled by one man and no one else.

■ Do you think that the reform attempt, which Saif al-Islam promised to lead before the outbreak of the uprising, would have actually established the rule of law?

■ I remember that I initially described this project as “Father, Son, and Evil Spirit,” and by evil spirit I meant the revolutionary committees. The project was, in fact, a succession project par excellence, as the regime tried through it to absorb anger, and the tension it led to began to intensify. It was not a serious project, but rather an embodiment of the alliance between Saif and the Muslim Brotherhood, as each of them was exploiting the other: on the one hand, the Brotherhood had a long-term vision for organizational expansion, while Saif was using them as a bridge to achieve his project. But neither of them trusted the other, until the regime began to crumble and the alliance fractured. Therefore, the “Brotherhood” was fully prepared when the uprising broke out in 2011, and through their honeymoon with Saif, they were able to establish institutions inside Libya and increase their influence, whether in the media, in drawing up the electoral law, or in many areas. However, the Saif project, despite its lack of seriousness, played an important role in creating cracks in the regime’s wall. During that period, the popular movement began, with the families of prisoners holding a sit-in in front of the prison every Saturday. It was like the match that sparked, along with other accumulations, the spark of the uprising. The uprising cannot be measured with a ruler, as there were interactions that precipitated its outbreak, with the beginning of the emergence of the culture of protests in Libya, and the impact of the revolution in both Tunisia and Egypt, so it was necessary for the Libyans to do something. I remember that I wrote an article in 2007 in which I said, “These people will surprise you.” In my response to someone who claimed that the uprising was American-made, I wrote that the Libyan opposition “only aims to expose the regime in order to achieve real change.”

■ Libya is suffering from a division that is tearing it apart between East and West. How do you read the current scene?
■ The Libyan reality today is tragic. We are in a failed state, or rather, a non-state. There are two governments and two parliaments, and matters have reached the point of fighting between the heads of two governments, amidst worsening violations and difficult living conditions in light of the power outage for several hours, the deteriorating condition of hospitals, and the collapse of the health infrastructure. Therefore, I do not see that Libya will emerge from this quagmire as long as the leaders of the scene are the ones who are consumed, and they are the ones among whom there are buried grudges.
The focus of the dispute is not how to build our economy or our foreign relations, but rather about power, that is, about the spoils, while Libya is a rich country and its population is small in number and homogeneous, and the current dispute is not between the Libyans, as we are not in a civil war, as there are fighters from the western region fighting with Khalifa Haftar, and others from The eastern region is fighting in Tripoli. The militias are made up of fighters from all cities. We did not witness fighting between one city and another. That is why I do not expect a solution in the presence of these people, because they are still adding fuel to the fire.

■ How will the solution come then?
■ Libya will not reach stability as long as there are armed groups on the ground obstructing the solution that restores the state’s legitimacy. Without a solution to the weapons problem, there is no civil peace. Even if they reach an agreement, this or that person will come, brandishing his weapons, to nullify what was agreed upon. We were saying that the militias must first be disarmed and dissolved, and this should have been done before the Skhirat Agreement (2015). But we kept entering into an agreement and exiting an agreement, and the problem persists. This weapon not only threatens social peace and political consensus, but also threatens the livelihood of Libyans. Therefore, I believe that there must be a clear vision supported regionally and internationally to disarm and dissolve rogue militias from state authority.

■ What is the contribution of civil society in pushing towards this political solution?
■ One of the problems that Libya faces today is the role of the media in providing the appropriate climate for a solution. We are looking for freedom and openness, and it is true that the media is free, but it has contributed negatively to increasing tension, spreading hate speech, and inciting violence. We have channels and media outlets that have aligned themselves politically, and we do not have a media law or a code of honor around which Libyans can gather. Therefore, it is true that the media provided support for the revolution, but it entered the maze of political conflict and violence. Let us not forget that Libya has no media traditions or institutions, except for the Saif al-Islam Foundation, which is a family foundation. After that, we saw a noticeable increase in the number of institutions, but they were not built on a correct foundation. Some of the emerging institutions fell into the net of political polarization and lost their moral authority.

■ What distinguishes your platform?
■ “The Libyan Shed” is a cultural and literary platform on Facebook that does not engage in politics, celebrates Libyan creativity, and is open to Arab and international literary production. Our goal is to collect and document everything related to Libyan production, so that if you want to see, you will find the latest literary news, articles, reports, and cultural follow-ups… The project began with a simple idea: “Why don’t I create a page to get my friends to join me in my readings?” For more than a year, visitors did not know who was behind the platform, and after that the “shed” grew and began to be referred to and transferred from. Today, it is in its fifth year and entering its sixth year. It received an appreciation award from the Ministry of Culture, has many followers, and is the first Libyan cultural platform on social media. This success imposes many responsibilities on us, the first of which is to continue and develop. We have begun a program to hold live cultural events, including seminars and lectures, and we devoted the first event to celebrating the works of writer and storyteller Azza Kamel Al-Maqhour in a symposium in Tunisia in which several critics, writers, and writers participated.

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