LIBYA

"IN TRIPOLI, PEOPLE ARE AFRAID, AND THEY ASK US TO STAY AND SUPPORT"

A dictator ready to kill and be killed. Rebels on the attack. And in between, the people and a religious community that will not abandon them.
It took five hours to get a line, then one ring, two rings... "Hello?" Fr. Allan Arcebuche is a Franciscan; he is director of Caritas in Tripoli. He is happy to be able to tell us what he is living during these days of confusion. "In this moment, I know there are clashes in Fashun, Dahara, and Janzour, outside Tripoli. The roads into the city are closed both to the East and to the West. Reserves are beginning to run out, generating panic-buying of food and petrol. Armed bands are roaming the streets, but it's hard to tell whether they are rebels or government militia."
Twenty-seven days had passed since the first demonstrations against President Gaddafi, which were followed by repression and revolts with hundreds, perhaps thousands of deaths. The population took to the streets, rebelling against the regime that has been in place since September 1969. But the winds of revolt in Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt have reached here, too.
As we go to press, the UN has passed a resolution authorizing "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. While the world stands and watches "there is high risk of a bloodbath," explains Giovanni Martinelli, Bishop of Tripoli, in an interview with the Italian daily Il Giornale. He remains in Libya, along with Bishop Sylvester Magro, his Vicar in Benghazi, and the greater part of the Libyan religious community, as the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Tommaso Caputo, explains: "The nuns, in 16 communities, are almost all working in hospitals, and have expressed their desire to stay beside those who are suffering. The same goes for the 15 priests who continue offering their service, concerned as they are to sustain and give every form of help they can to the Catholic community (about 100,000 faithful) and to the whole population." It is the same population who asked the religious to remain, promising them protection, and informing the Nunciature: "We don't know to what extent the situation reported by the foreign media is real. Our sisters are living in places far away from the clashes. At most, they have seen the increase in the number of dead and wounded in their hospitals."
"Foreigners went home," Fr. Arcebuche reports. "The Catholic community is made up mostly of foreigners who are in Libya for work. Manila has just organized to repatriate 10,000 Filipinos. Those most at risk are the Eritreans, many of them clandestine immigrants waiting for a passage to Europe." Their country has not organized anything for taking them home. "They have no point of reference and, in the present context, they seem to be the most abandoned," we hear from the Nunciature.
"Our main task is now to keep open the channels of communication, both within the country and with the outside world," the director of Caritas tells us. Then the phone line begins to be disturbed. He tells us quickly before the line goes down, "Pray for us, for the Christians, and for the population. People are afraid, terrified that civil war may break out. Pray for us; pray for…." (P.P.)