Arthur Chatora, Intern, African Conflict Prevention Programme, ISS Pretoria Office
The mainstream media’s conspicuous silence about the racially
motivated human rights abuses perpetrated against black Libyans and
immigrants, by the NATO-backed Transitional National Council (TNC)
forces in Libya, is disturbing. Similarly, the high civilian casualties
of the current intense fighting in the city of Sirte seems, to a large
extent, to be underplayed. Yet organisations such as Human Rights Watch
have acknowledged that civilian abuses have continued and called on
forces on both sides that are fighting in Sirte to minimize harm to
civilians and treat all prisoners humanely.
This biased media coverage raises questions about the credibility of
media organisations and their agenda. Is it because the presence of
widespread evidence of racially motivated human rights abuses committed
by the TNC forces raises moral and ethical questions that challenge the
validity of the notion of a “humanitarian war”? The responsibility
assumed by NATO and the TNC forces to protect civilian lives from abuse
by Gaddafi forces is also questionable, as it appears this mandate does
not seem to extend to the protection of black Libyans and African
immigrants.
It seems clear that although the United Nations (UN) has
acknowledged that war crimes have been committed on both sides, the
mainstream media has been preoccupied with covering human rights
violations allegedly committed by Col.
Muammar Gaddafi’s
forces while ignoring those committed by the NATO-backed forces. This
is a dissimulation strategy, which demonstrates that the Libyan conflict
is being waged on different fronts. A snap content and discourse
analysis shows that various media reveal an inherent ideological bias in
coverage of the war.
From the inception of the Libyan conflict, a range of organisations
within different segments of the media, have generally assumed a
narrative that is pro-rebels and anti-Gaddafi in their coverage of the
war. The media’s ideological position is the one informed by the
dichotomy of “us” (NATO and TNC forces) and “them” (Gaddafi forces),
emanating from the fundamental humanitarian reasons and justifications
given by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to implement the UN
Security Council Resolution 1973, adopted to protect civilians from
violence and abuses by the Gaddafi regime.
From the outset of the armed conflict, rebel groups earned a
reputation as “freedom fighters” or “liberators” working with NATO on a
humanitarian mission to protect civilians from violence and abuses.
Consequently, some media organisations assumed this ideological position
in their coverage of the war, framing the rebels as “pro-democracy
liberators” while constructing Gaddafi’s forces as ‘human rights
violators’. Leading media institutions have been producing and
articulating these discourses that are in line with representing a
binary narrative that supports the position that NATO and the Libyan TNC
forces have a humanitarian responsibility to protect civilians’ lives
while Gaddafi forces have been primarily constructed as human rights
violators. Sections of the media have continued to dissimulate
narratives of racial human abuses committed by rebel forces because such
representations are not congruent with or contradict a pre-defined
ideological position that constructs rebel forces and their allies as
human rights custodians. Thus, such human rights violations and
civilian abuses are not afforded media prominence and attention. The
dissimulation of unfavourable narratives relates to the concept of
symbolic annihilation whereby the media denies a marginalised or
minority social group(s) a voice through under-representation or
non-coverage in the media.
There have been several cases and evidence of racial violence
against black Libyans and African immigrants that have been reported by
humanitarian organisations but these cases have rarely been covered by
mainstream media organisations. For example, Amnesty International
recently released a detailed 107-page report entitled
The Battle for Libya: Killings, Disappearances and Torture whose contents show evidence of racial abuses.
The report focuses on among other issues, the human rights abuses being
committed against black Africans, by both the Gaddafi and the TNC
forces.
Similarly, in August 2011 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
issued a strong call for sub-Saharan Africans to be protected in Libya
after reports emerged from Tripoli of people being targeted because of
their race. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres,
urged restraint from rebel forces and Libyan civilians adding that,
Africans especially, have been particularly vulnerable to hostility or
acts of vengeance. The UN has documented several cases of rebels
torturing migrant workers in rebel-held areas but these cases have
rarely found coverage in mainstream media. More evidence of human rights
violations has continued to emerge following the recent publication of a
Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on the arbitrary detention of
black-skinned people in Tripoli. In a statement Sarah Leah Whitson,
Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch
categorically and unequivocally stated that, “The NTC should stop
arresting African migrants and black Libyans unless it has concrete
evidence of criminal activity. It should also take immediate steps to
protect them from violence and abuse.” Similarly, Fred Abrahams, the
special advisor at Human Rights Watch recently called on military
leaders in Sirte from both sides to make sure that their forces protect
civilians or at least allow them to flee the combat zone.
It in interesting to note that despite widespread evidence of such
racial abuses perpetrated by the TNC forces, it appears mainstream media
organisations have not been willing to represent a narrative that does
not conform to its set ideological position and agenda. What has become
evident where the reports of racial abuses have reached mainstream media
is the framing of a narrative that portrays the victims as “African
mercenaries,” despite the availability of adequate evidence to prove
that many of the victims were not mercenaries. Amnesty International
reports that, “the allegations about the use of mercenaries proved to be
largely unfounded” but this has remained an unknown fact to the public.
This revelation demonstrates the media’s complicity in the human rights
violations. Therefore, mainstream media organisations have concealed
gross abuses that could have been exposed and stopped by not
representing and speaking against such human rights violations.
The lack of adequate exposure and coverage of the rebels’ racial
violations by mainstream media corroborate the assertion that the media
is not serving the public but it is serving power and in the process it
has abandoned professional media ethics and standards.
