Libya's Foreign Ministry Cut Off By Men Wielding Anti-Aircraft Guns, Official Says

[Comrade Grumpy]

Source: CNN

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Armed men in trucks with anti-aircraft guns mounted on them surrounded the Libyan Foreign Ministry in Tripoli early Sunday and refused to allow ministry staff to enter the building, a ministry official said. Gunmen diverted traffic away from the ministry in central Tripoli as they continued the siege through the day.

In a news conference at the scene, protesters said they had a list of demands. Their main goal was to push the General National Congress to pass a proposed law that would ban Gadhafi-era officials from holding government posts. The political isolation law proposal has been a matter of contention among lawmakers for several months because it could push current senior officials out of office for serving under the former regime.

The protesters said they chose the foreign ministry because it employs officials who continue to serve after the 2011 revolution that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi. Another one of their demands is to "cleanse" the Foreign Ministry of former regime elements.

<snip> Watchdog groups have been calling on Libyan authorities to rein in armed groups that they say continue to pose a threat to the country's future. "Unlawful armed groups that show up with heavy weapons and block access to government institutions demanding grievance, crosses the line of peaceful protest; it is intimidating and threatening and there should be accountability for these actions" Hanan Salah, the Libya researcher for Human Rights Watch told CNN on Sunday.


Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/28/world/africa/libya-unrest/index.html

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"Eighteen months after the fall of the regime, Libya remains awash in weapons and militias that the government has been struggling to control to secure the country."

If you like post-Gaddafi Libya, you'll love post-Assad Syria.

[Sunlei]

1. it is "intimidating and threatening" but no one is firing the guns. They block access.

Must be pretty upsetting to have 'war criminals' allowed to remain as part of the new Gov.

I hope both sides can work this out without violence.

[Sand Wind]

2. Yes they have a lot of Work to take care of all the perspective of theyr society. Nt

[socialist_n_TN]

3. I'm having a discussion about Libya tonight, so I've been researching......

the country and the revolution a little bit. While it's true there are a lot of armed militias in the country, this might be a case where they are needed for self defense. The elements of the rebellion were pretty disparate and with some, the ONLY thing they had in common was the opposition to Ghadaffi. There were revolutionary socialist who have every right to fear the Islamists if they disarmed.

[John2]

4. A good question to know,

would be how many Loyalists are we talking about and who they are? How do we know, they don't have followers themselves? And what are the numbers of each factions? Just what is Libya's history concerning a Western style Democracy? Just what triggered the Libyan revolution anyway?