Libya faced a nationwide “Day of Anger” on Thursday called by cyber-activists in a bid to emulate revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, two days after clashes in second city Benghazi left dozens injured.
The scale of the protests will be a test for the country’s leader Moammar Gadaffi (68) who has been in power since 1969 — making him the Arab world’s longest-serving leader.
One Facebook group urging a Day of Anger in Libya, which had 4 400 members on Monday, had seen that number more than double to 9 600 by Wednesday following the Benghazi unrest.
The Quryna newspaper said security forces and demonstrators clashed late on Tuesday in Benghazi in the eastern Cyrenaica region in what it branded the work of “saboteurs” among a small group of protesters.
The director of the city’s Al-Jala hospital, Abdelkarim Gubeaili, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that 38 people were treated for light injuries.
Security forces intervened to halt a confrontation between Gadaffi supporters and the demonstrators, said the newspaper which is close to Gadaffi’s son, Seif al-Islam.
At least 10 members of the security forces were among the injured, it added.
‘Free expression’
Both Britain and the European Union called for restraint by the authorities in Libya, whose relations with the West have improved sharply over the past decade after years of virtual pariah status.
The European Union urged Libya to allow “free expression”. “We also call for calm and for all violence to be avoided,” said a spokesperson for the bloc’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
British Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said: “I call on the Libyan government to respect the right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, and on all sides to exercise restraint and refrain from violence.
“We are concerned by reports of the arrest of Libyans who have called for demonstrations or spoken to the media and of violent incidents during demonstrations in Benghazi,” he added.
Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “Libyans have the same rights as Egyptians and Tunisians to express discontent and call for reform in their own country.
“People should not be locked up simply because they call for peaceful protests,” he added. “Libyans have a right to expect reforms, not arrests, detentions and further state repression.”
In the aftermath of the Benghazi protests, activists were rounded up in the opposition stronghold on Wednesday, an informed source said.
But Libya also released 110 Islamists of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an AFP correspondent witnessed, bringing to 360 the number of political detainees it has freed since March last year.
‘Blood of the martyrs will not be in vain’
Libyan League For Human Rights head Mohammed Tarnish told journalists outside Abu Salim prison in the capital Tripoli that the releases had been scheduled months ago and were “unconnected to any other matter”.
The protest in Benghazi started as a sit-in by families of more than 1 000 prisoners killed in a 1996 shooting in the same Tripoli prison demanding the release of their lawyer, Fethi Tarbel, Libyan newspapers said.
But the crowd of protesters grew and they began chanting anti-regime slogans such as “the people will end the corruption” and “the blood of the martyrs will not be in vain”, before police moved in to disperse them.
The BBC quoted witnesses as saying stones were thrown at police who responded with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets.
Marchers later hurled Molotov cocktails in a downtown square, damaging cars, blocking the road and hurling rocks, Quryna said.
Soon afterward, state television showed footage of hundreds of Gadaffi supporters in the streets of Benghazi as well as Tripoli, Syrte and Sebha.
Loyalist demonstrations continued in the capital on Wednesday evening.
Thursday’s protest has been called to commemorate the deaths of 14 protesters in an Islamist rally in Benghazi in 2006. — AFP