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One small step for Libyans

The government has occasionally teased the people with the possibility of reforms before. Still, they believe change is possible.

By Sarah Leah Whitson

A year ago, my colleagues and I organized an unprecedented news conference in Tripoli to release our report assessing Libya's human-rights record and steps toward reform. We invited victims of government abuses to join us and speak about what they had suffered.

Seif Islam Gadhafi, one of the sons of Libya's ruler, was primarily responsible for persuading officials to allow us to hold the news conference. As the semi-sanctioned voice for reform, his "private" foundation had pushed publicly for changing the country's laws and freeing political prisoners, and it helped establish two private newspapers that sometimes criticized government policies. We had a sense that, with Seif Islam's support, some political liberalization was possible.

Yet Seif Islam just told the world that he and his father's government would fight to the "last bullet" to keep themselves in power. And true to his word - this time - the Libyan authorities attacked their own people. As of this writing, the death toll since protests began has reached the hundreds.

Once Seif Islam might have led Libyans to a peaceful transition, but in fact he abandoned his reform agenda long before the demonstrations that have rocked "Brother Leader" Moammar Gadhafi's rule. With no progress on institutional or legal reforms, and a stalemate with the old guard over his efforts to rein in the country's notorious security forces, Seif Islam last year announced his withdrawal from political life and said that his foundation would no longer focus on human rights and political affairs. His media outlets were closed for various periods of time, and scores of journalists who were critical were suspended and even arrested.

For sure, most Libyans we spoke with never had much faith that Moammar Gadhafi would learn new tricks, or that the announced reforms were anything more than an endless loop of promises made and broken. What is awe-inspiring and heartening is the Libyans' stand today, against deadly force and decades of stifling oppression.

Libyans stand almost alone among other Arabs for the extreme isolation they experienced not only under Gadhafi's iron-fisted rule but over a decade of international sanctions for the country's role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Until a few years ago, Internet communications were virtually nonexistent, and the only local news source was state media.

Libyans thus had little opportunity to assemble components of civil society. Political associations, human-rights organizations, independent professional associations, or trade unions were all strictly proscribed, and organized opposition to the "ideology of the 1969 revolution" was punishable by death. On my first visit to Libya in 2005, the specially selected "civil society representatives" permitted to talk with us, and even government officials we met, displayed anxiety about expressing any opinions outside their sanctioned talking points. They literally recited chapter and verse of the "Green Book," Gadhafi's small manuscript on governance. The performance was unmatched by anything I had seen in Syria and Iraq.

This atmosphere improved, and we heard more criticism and debate, during the brief opening Seif Islam heralded. No doubt wider access to the Internet has had the greatest effect. Witnessing the collapse of strongmen in Tunisia and Egypt doubtless bolstered Libyans' newfound confidence that such a transformation was within their reach.

In December 2009, I recorded our meeting with a young Libyan activist outside Tripoli who told us about the arrests, beatings, and torture he and his brothers had endured after security forces discovered that they had planned a demonstration in the capital's central square. I asked him why he risked so much to organize at best 100 demonstrators who would probably be crushed within an hour of assembling. "It could be like the time the Americans landed on the moon," he replied, "a small step for us but a big step for Libya."

Last week, Libyans had their moon landing. We owe it to them to help ensure that their journey has not been in vain.