Qaddafi Tightens Grip On Libyan Students
The New York Times reports:
TRIPOLI, Libya — The crackdown by the government of Col.Muammar el-Qaddafi against the rebels trying to unseat him has extended even into Tripoli’s schools, where students talk about visits from military officers warning them to watch only state television, payments of 200 Libyan dinars a day to attend pro-Qaddafi rallies and their fears that confiding in the wrong friend may mean interrogation by the secret police.
“I can give you a certainty that there was killing,” whispered a 14-year-old girl at a Tripoli school, saying anxiously that she could not name the killers, “but I think you know.”
“I think I am going to jail for that,” she added.
On a government-sponsored tour of a Tripoli school and other trips for a small group of foreign journalists, she and other students braved watchful teachers and official tour guides to explain that as schools here have reopened — some of them after a hiatus of three weeks — the government’s violent crackdown on the revolt has already left a deep impression on Libyan children and young adults. And like much of the Middle East, Libya is a nation of young adults: a third of the population is under 15 years old and 70 percent is under 35.
The few students who talked openly described their horror at the violence and the sleepless nights they had endured trying to forget about the eruptions of gunfire. A 17-year-old boy said the military had detained his 7-year-old neighbor at a protest and then deposited him a week later at a Tripoli soccer stadium; his father and teenage brother are still missing.
“It is terrifying,” the 17-year-old said. The names of the students were withheld to protect them from retaliation.
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