I recently went to a lecture by a Libyan-American professor named Ali Ahmida. In his lecture he spoke about the very-rarely-talked-about Libyan Genocide of the 1920s and 1930s. After reading articles written by him on the topic I thought I might give an overview of the genocide to others who might not know about it.
In 1922 the Italian Fascist party gained control of Italy and thus gained control of Libya. The Fascist party rejected the old Italian regime's attempt to educate and "Italianize" Libyans. Instead, they viewed Libyans as an inferior race with an inferior and banned education to Libyans after 6th grade. Libyans could only work as laborers. Libyan resistance fighters, led by the infamous Umar al-Mukhtar, fought back against the brutal Fascist policies. In response, Mussolini forcibly deported two-thirds of the population of eastern Libya to concentration camps. Eastern Libya had been the central organizing ground for the Libyan resistance, and with two-thirds of its population now deported, the resistance was crushed. Experts estimate that as many as 70,000 Libyans died during the concentration camps due to forced starvation, induced epidemics, grueling death marches and terrible living conditions. In addition to people, Fascists also captured and interned all livestock in Eastern Libya. 80% of all livestock died by 1934, making famine a reality for thousands more Libyans.
This topic is interesting to me because of its relative obscurity. Why don't people know about the Libyan genocide? Why isn't it talked about? Dr. Ahmida writes that the Libyan genocide is not acknowledged because of the Eurocentric and unfounded belief that Italian Fascist colonialism was somehow "benign"- at least when compared to Nazi Germany. Ahmida argues that genocide scholars have been preoccupied with European genocide and have failed to consider genocide under colonialism, because of the lack of regard for indigenous, brown populations: "German Nazis killed Europeans, creating outrage among other Europeans, but Italian Fascists killed North African Muslims, playing into orientalist fantasies and colonial racist and modernist ideologies about the dehumanized, backward natives and the price of modernity."
I think this topic really helps to illustrate holes in our academic and scholarly thinking: why do we accept one thing as genocide and not another? And to what extent does our acceptance of the term 'genocide' rest on our learned Euro-centric assumptions, or our previous exposure to the topic?
I think that Marina is right in saying that this genocide has been forgotten largely due to the the fact that 20th century genocide awareness is for the most part Euro-centric. This case makes me think that there are countless other cases of smaller scale genocides, especially under colonialism, that have been forgotten. This may be because the countries affected by colonialism have changed so much since colonialism and do not have the power to have the genocide committed against their people recognized.
ReplyDeleteIt is also probably true that cases of genocide that were committed around the time of World War II, like the Libyan genocide, were forgotten in the shadow of the Holocaust.
This post makes me think that genocide studies should be expanded, particularly at Oberlin, and that a class on genocide in other parts of the world, besides Eurasia, should be offered.