The Gaddafis are the 21st-century version of Nero and Caligula
A still from the 1979 film Caligula
If you thought that what happens in history is peculiar to the period, rather than peculiar to the circumstances and unchanging humanity, the reality of the Gaddafis should put you straight.
We read the history of imperial Rome aghast at its tyrants, their absolute power and unlimited wealth, their sons who, raised in that atmosphere of perverted madness end up detached from reality, twisted and sadistic, obsessed with sex, cruelty, violence and mad extravagance.
And we think ‘that was then, this is now’.
But Nero, Caligula, Messalina and the rest were not the products of ‘ancient Rome’. They were the products of a highly specific set of circumstances which have, inadvertently replicated thousands of years down the line, resulted in the exact same phenomenon with the Gaddafis.
CNN reports (and please watch the video in the link I’ve posted below even if it makes you sick to your stomach as it did me):
As we were about to leave, one of the staff told us there was a nanny who worked for Hannibal Gadhafi who might speak to us. He said she’d been burnt by Hannibal’s wife, Aline.
I thought he meant perhaps a cigarette stubbed out on her arm. Nothing prepared me for the moment I walked into the room to see Shweyga Mullah.
At first I thought she was wearing a hat and something over her face. Then the awful realization dawned that her entire scalp and face were covered in red wounds and scabs, a mosaic of injuries that rendered her face into a grotesque patchwork.
Even though the burns were inflicted three months ago, she was clearly still in considerable pain. But she told us her story calmly.
She’d been the nanny to Hannibal’s little son and daughter.
The 30-year-old came to Libya from her native Ethiopia a year ago. At first things seemed OK, but then six months into her employment she said she was burned by Aline.
Three months later the same thing happened again, this time much more seriously.
In soft tones, she explained how Aline lost her temper when her daughter wouldn’t stop crying and Mullah refused to beat the child.
“She took me to a bathroom. She tied my hands behind my back, and tied my feet. She taped my mouth, and she started pouring the boiling water on my head like this,” she said, imitating the vessel of scalding hot water being poured over her head.
She peeled back the garment draped carefully over her body. Her chest, torso and legs are all mottled with scars — some old, some still red, raw and weeping. As she spoke, clear liquid oozed from one nasty open wound on her head.
After one attack, “There were maggots coming out of my head, because she had hidden me, and no one had seen me,” Mullah said.
Eventually, a guard found her and took her to a hospital, where she received some treatment.
But when Aline Gadhafi found out about the kind actions of her co-worker, he was threatened with imprisonment, if he dared to help her again.
“When she did all this to me, for three days, she wouldn’t let me sleep,” Mullah said. “I stood outside in the cold, with no food. She would say to staff, ‘If anyone gives her food, I’ll do the same to you.’ I had no water — nothing.”
Her colleague, a man from Bangladesh who didn’t want to give his name, says he was also regularly beaten and slashed with knives. He corroborated Mullah’s account and says the family’s dogs were treated considerably better than the staff.
Mullah was forced to watch as the dogs ate and she was left to go hungry, he said.
It seems to sum up how the workers at the beachside complex were viewed by the Gadhafi family.
“I worked a whole year they didn’t give me one penny,” Mullah said. “Now I want to go to the hospital. I have no money. I have nothing.”
She starts sobbing gently — an utterly pitiful scene.
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Please watch this:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/28/libya.gadhafi.nanny/index.html
Oh Daphne, this is just the media making up stories, and being sensational. John Dalli’s daughter also worked as a babysitter with Aline Ghaddafi, and nothing of the sort happened to her.
Sorry David S. but it’s not media making up stories. They did it again and again in the past. check this link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/gaddafi-son-sparks-crisis-with-arrest-at-swiss-hotel-876809.html
[Daphne – David S’s comment is ironic, not literal. It’s a reaction to EU Commissioner John Dalli’s statement earlier this year that he thinks the violence is Libya is staged for the international cameras.]
Up to now I always thought and advocated that the Gaddafi clan should be given fair trials, when caught.
Now I honestly feel that they should be executed right away. They do not deserve any better, and when I say they, I am refering to all of them including their wives and children.
This might sound barbaric, but I would call it justice. No time should be wasted.
I read that his wife and daughter are said to be in England, if found they should be sent back to Libya to make sure they get what they all deserve.
This kind of savagery is very common in Middle Eastern middle class households particularly in Saudia Arabia where such stories are quite common.
This applies to construction workers in other Arab countries such as the UAE too, where they are treated as slaves. Arab countries have still a lot to answer for in terms of human rights.
[Daphne – Libya is not in the Middle East.]
Saudi Arabia is not in the Middle East.
KMB and J Dalli should be forced to watch such news .
I know that Libya is a North African country.
The point I wanted to make is that these savage practices are quite common in today’s Middle East, particularly among the indegenous Arab population. I referred to the Middle East because, like Libya, it is populated by Arabs.
[Daphne – 1. Libya is not populated by Arabs. It is populated by North African people who speak Arabic. Arabic-speaking does not = Arab, which is why the Maltese are considered – after centuries of debate – European. Nor does Arab = Muslim or Muslim = Arab. Savage practices are not common in ‘the Middle East’. They are common everywhere that people with absolutely no breeding and lots of money suddenly find themselves in control of servants. Even in Malta I know of Filipina maids who are treated like dirt, one of them made to sleep under the stairs like a dog. The only reason that grave crimes like this are not committed here is because the fear of prosecution and exposure is too great. But otherwise the circumstances lend themselves to it, starting from the fact that the common factor among women who savage their maids is their own ‘imprisonment’ at the hands of their family or culture, which leads to them venting their anger on their maid or doing to the maid what has been done to them. Your comment shows ignorance and racist prejudice. By the same token, you might as well argue that ‘all Arab men are very brave’ and that risking your life to overthrow a dictator is a common practice among ‘Arabs’.]
@ La Redoute. Saudi Arabia is in the Middle East.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/country_profiles/791936.stm
Saudi Arabia is a gulf state.
This reminds me of the the horrific stories that emerged from Romania after the Caucescus were removed from power.
Remember the stories of Caucescu’s sadistic son and the young girl (Olympic champion) he used to force his attentions on? Incidentally. Caucescu was yet another bosom buddy of Mintoff who got a Gieh Ir-Repubblika.