SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
At least six peaceful protesters were abducted and several others were wounded after armed men fired live ammunition including from heavy machine-guns to disperse a demonstration in Tripoli on August 23, according to eyewitness testimony and video evidence examined by Amnesty International. The organization is calling for the immediate release of all those abducted, for a prompt, thorough and independent investigation into the use of force and for those responsible to be held accountable.
On Sunday protesters took to the streets in several cities in the west of Libya, including Tripoli, Misrata and al-Zawyia, to protest against deteriorating economic conditions and corruption. In Tripoli, at around 7.30 pm, unidentified men in military camouflage clothing opened fire on the crowd without warning, using AK-style rifles and truck-mounted guns.
Sources told Amnesty International that at least six protesters were abducted during the same incident. The attack happened in an area of Tripoli controlled by the al-Nawasi militia, nominally operating under the Ministry of Interior of the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). Witnesses interviewed by Amnesty International said that this and information they had received from individuals affiliated with the al-Nawasi militia that some of those abducted were in its custody were strong indications that this militia was behind the attack.
"The GNA has the responsibility to uphold the right to peaceful protest, protect protesters from those seeking to silence them with live ammunition and address the underlying issues that have led people to come out onto the streets," said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
"Instead of reining in abusive, unaccountable militias and armed groups, the GNA has been relying on them for security, law enforcement and fighting its rivals. This lawlessness and impunity only perpetuate the suffering of civilians in Libya, who are not even able to safely voice their legitimate grievances about the dire economic and humanitarian situation without facing the barrels of guns. We are calling on the GNA to immediately conduct a thorough, impartial, independent and transparent investigation into the unjustified use of force against protesters, and ensure that all those responsible are held accountable. The whereabouts of all those abducted must be revealed and those detained must be immediately released."
Amnesty International spoke to five eyewitnesses and examined photos and video footage of the protests in Tripoli.
Legitimate demands met with unlawful force
At around 3pm, protesters began gathering in Martyrs' Square in downtown Tripoli. Some protesters went to demonstrate outside the headquarters of the Presidential Council, which presides over the GNA. Police were present, guarding the premises, but no incidents were reported there and the protesters later returned to Martyrs' Square.
One protest leader told Amnesty International: "We are protesting for water, we are protesting for electricity, we are protesting so young Libyans do not have to emigrate to Europe."
At around 7.30 pm, some protesters made their way towards the headquarters of the High Council of State, an advisory body to the GNA which is located in the Radisson Blu Al Mahary Hotel. As they were marching, unarmed, along Tarik el-Shati, a highway in Tripoli next to the sea, unidentified armed men wearing military-style camouflage clothes opened fire on them.
According to witnesses, photos and video evidence, the assailants were carrying AK-style rifles, and live rounds are audible in video footage. Videos also show assailants using a heavy machine-gun mounted on a pick-up truck to fire live rounds into the air to disperse the protesters and pushed them back towards Martyrs Square. Witnesses said that there were no warnings or any other attempt to disperse the crowd peacefully before the shooting started. Amnesty International geolocated the videos, determining that some showed images from Tarik el-Shati and others from Martyrs' Square.
Witnesses told Amnesty International that they saw at least three men being wounded. The organization examined photos showing a man with possible bullet wounds in his lower right side and back, and a video showing a man who appeared to be unconscious being carried on a motorcycle. The shooting continued to be heard until around 9 pm.
One protester told Amnesty International: "The images of armed groups firing on peaceful protesters brought back memories of the February 2011 protests against [the late former leader of Libya] Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi."
As the protesters began dispersing around 9 pm, the assailants followed them and kept firing live rounds. Some protesters responded by blocking streets with burning tires in an attempt to defend themselves.
According to three sources, at least six protesters were abducted by unknown assailants and their whereabouts remain unknown. Sources told Amnesty International that they believe that the al-Nawasi militia is arbitrarily detaining them in a location close to Tarik al-Shati.
One protest leader told Amnesty International: "They [militias] want to establish themselves as guardians of the Libyan people."
On August 23, the GNA Ministry of Interior issued statements condemning the attackers, denying their affiliation with them, and promising investigations. However, the following day, Fayez al-Sarraj, the President of the Presidential Council and the Prime Minister of the GNA, said: "Those who protested did not obtain the necessary permits to protest from the relevant authorities... Small groups of infiltrators infiltrated the protesters, some of whom were armed.... Riots and destruction of public and private property took place... We warn [the public] about infiltrators trying to incite sedition and sabotage."
Despite Fayez al-Sarraj's comments, Amnesty International has found no evidence that there were armed individuals among the protesters or that the protesters attacked on Tarik al-Shati were endangering the lives of others.
Background
Despite the recent announcement of a ceasefire on August 21 between the GNA, which controls much of the west of the country, and the Libyan National Army, which is in control of the east, the humanitarian situation in Libya continues to deteriorate. Protests over the deteriorating economic situation are also taking place this week in the city of Sebha in the south of Libya and in the town of al-Qubh in the east.
A recent statement by the International Committee of the Red Cross raised the alarm about the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases in the country, amid the ongoing economic crisis and its impact on the lives and livelihoods of all those in Libya.
Libya continues to be plagued by powerful militias and armed groups, who commit serious violations of international humanitarian law and other crimes with complete impunity. Not only are militia members not held to account for their crimes, but authorities continue to pay them salaries and at times praise their efforts in providing security to citizens.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
(212) 807-8400"The TikTok ban wasn’t primarily about national security or influence... but rather political control," one tech columnist wrote.
President Donald Trump is pushing to finalize a deal that would hand majority control of TikTok over to a consortium that includes two of his closest billionaire allies.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that under the planned deal, 80% of the stake will be controlled by a group of American investors, while the remaining 20% will remain with Chinese firms.
The American companies include the investment firm Silver Lake, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and the technology company Oracle. The latter two are controlled by some of Trump's most prolific supporters.
Marc Andreessen and his partner Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to Trump's super PAC during the 2024 election.
Andreessen, who said at the end of 2024 he was spending roughly "half" his time at Mar-a-Lago, was tapped as an economic adviser to Trump earlier this year, where he helped to recruit staffers to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). After unleashing a bevy of false claims, Andreessen led the charge for DOGE to virtually kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he'd long loathed for its investigations into his investment firms.
Oracle, meanwhile, was founded by Larry Ellison—one of Trump's earliest backers in the Silicon Valley world—who reportedly advised the president during his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Over the next five years, Ellison accumulated enough wealth to briefly overtake Musk as the world's richest person and has used those riches to consolidate control over the media. After taking office in January for his second term, Trump began to champion Ellison as the man to take over TikTok.
In August—with the help of Trump's Federal Communications Commission (FCC)— SkyDance, owned by Ellison's son David, purchased Paramount, which owns CBS News. The younger Ellison quickly began making moves to reshape the network's politics, most notably by planning to purchase the "anti-woke" publication the Free Press and recruiting its founder, Bari Weiss, to a senior editorial role, which has left newsroom staffers fearing for their editorial independence. Ellison also has designs on a $70 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros., which would give him control over CNN as well.
Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America warns that soon, "one Trump-aligned billionaire family could end up controlling CBS News, CNN, and TikTok."
Gertz noted that TikTok would join a media ecosystem that is increasingly bowing to the president, with X and Meta controlled by Trump-aligned billionaires and the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times shifting their coverage to flatter his worldview. Meanwhile, nominal holdouts like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have been slapped with multibillion-dollar lawsuits, as Trump has accused them of trying to harm him with negative coverage.
Trump said that he plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to finalize the sale of TikTok, which is currently owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance.
The sale of the platform was set into motion in 2024 under President Joe Biden, who signed legislation banning TikTok in the United States unless it was sold to a US company. Congress justified the decision at the time by claiming that China was using the app to surveil Americans and using the platform's algorithm to feed them propaganda, though free press advocates criticized the ban as an effort to censor opinions and information unfavorable to the US government.
One persistent gripe from advocates for the ban was that the platform had become a major source for videos depicting the visceral horrors of Israel's military assault on Gaza. In one infamous exchange, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken and then-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) pointed to TikTok as a reason why “the PR has been so awful” for Israel since the war began and said that this was a primary motivation behind the ban among legislators.
Its soon-to-be new partial-owner, Ellison, however, is one of Israel's staunchest supporters. He has donated at least $26 million to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) via a nonprofit called "Friends of the IDF" and once offered a seat on Oracle's board to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Independent journalist Jack Poulson also reported this week that David Ellison once coordinated with former Israeli military commander-in-chief Benny Gantz on an effort to spy on and disrupt American activists for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
"The panic over TikTok was always in part because it is a prime source for factually accurate coverage of the Gaza genocide," said Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine, on X. "Now one of the leading pro-Israel fanatics is set to take control and ensure that young people don't keep getting videos telling the truth about Palestine."
According to the Journal, TikTok's new proprietors will not be reconstructing the app's much-maligned algorithm from the ground up. Rather, "TikTok engineers will re-create a set of content-recommendation algorithms for the app, using technology licensed from TikTok’s parent ByteDance."
As tech columnist John Herrman points out for New York magazine, this deal doesn't resolve the "stated reasons" for the ban, since it still gives its Chinese owners a stake in the company and uses their underlying technology.
"When it comes to the TikTok ban, though, 'stated reasons' were never especially useful," Herrman wrote. "In the end, the TikTok ban wasn’t primarily about national security or influence—although this new arrangement will have implications for both—but rather political control, and the demonstration thereof."
"We must use every ounce of our leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire," said Sanders.
Joining numerous genocide and Holocaust experts, human rights groups in Israel and around the world, and a United Nations commission, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday accused the Israeli government of engaging in a genocide against the Palestinian people.
In an editorial titled "It Is Genocide," the independent Vermont senator leveled his harshest criticism yet of the far-right Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Picking up on the findings of a report from the United Nations’ (UN) commission of inquiry released on Tuesday, Sanders recounted the massive human suffering that Israel has inflicted on Gaza in the 23 months since Hamas launched a surprise attack that killed 1,200 Israelis.
"Out of a population of 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has now killed some 65,000 people and wounded roughly 164,000," he wrote. "The full toll is likely much higher, with many thousands of bodies buried under the rubble. A leaked classified Israeli military database indicates that 83% of those killed have been civilians. More than 18,000 children have been killed, including 12,000 aged 12 or younger."
The raw death toll doesn't capture the extent of Israel's genocidal actions, Sanders continued, and he pointed to the systematic destruction of infrastructure in Gaza that has made the exclave unlivable.
"Satellite imagery shows that the Israeli bombardment has destroyed 70% of all structures in Gaza," he said. "The UN estimates that 92% of housing units have been damaged or destroyed. At this very moment, Israel is demolishing what's left of Gaza City. Most hospitals have been destroyed, and almost 1,600 healthcare workers have been killed. Almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities are now inoperable."
Sanders went on to accuse Israel of "openly pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank" with the full support of the US government. He also noted the consistently dehumanizing rhetoric that high-level Israeli officials have used against Palestinians, including statements labeling them "animals," as well as a desire to erase "all of Gaza from the face of the earth."
In response to this genocide, Sanders said, "we must use every ounce of our leverage to demand an immediate ceasefire, a massive surge of humanitarian aid facilitated by the UN, and initial steps to provide Palestinians with a state of their own."
Pro-Palestinian activists have pushed Sanders for nearly two years to label Israel's actions a genocide. While he has consistently condemned the Israeli military's mass killings of Palestinian civilians, Wednesday marked the first time he described them as a genocide.
Twenty members of Congress have now described Israel's assault as a genocide, according to Prem Thakker of Zeteo. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) also said Wednesday that she believes "Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people." She and Sanders are the first Jewish members of Congress to say so.
"I feel compelled to speak out," said Balint, "because I know there are so many others like me who are horrified by what they see."
"These repeated attacks are grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
An investigation published Wednesday revealed that Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded almost 20,000 others over 23 months of Israel's US-backed genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
The New Humanitarian's open-source investigation chronologically documents the killing of 2,957 Palestinian aid-seekers and the wounding of 19,866 others.
These figures include nearly 1,000 Palestinians who United Nations human rights officials say have been killed at or near aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israeli soldiers have admitted to receiving orders to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of civilians at GHF distribution points.
The New Humanitarian noted that these numbers represent approximately 4.6% of the more than 65,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures are likely a vast undercount.
“These are not isolated incidents. They're not just similar incidents. They are a pattern, and reflect policy and an acceptance on the part of the state that this should continue indefinitely,” Adil Haque, an international law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, told The New Humanitarian.
Haque and other experts interviewed for the investigation called Israeli attacks on Gaza aid-seekers "grave violations of international humanitarian law that likely amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide."
Israel is the subject of an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
The New Humanitarian's investigation identified "clearly discernible patterns... showing how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid as a tool for different purposes at different points in the war: deadly crowd control, forced displacement, and the destruction of the collective ability of Palestinians in Gaza to survive."
Haque said that "if Israeli leaders were simply indifferent to the killing of so many Palestinian aid-seekers, not caring one way or the other, then international condemnation and potential liability for war crimes should be enough to lead them to change their policies to prevent or repress such killings."
"Their willingness to bear such costs is some evidence that they intend for these killings to continue,” he added.
The New Humanitarian's investigation comes as Israeli forces ramp up their assault on Gaza City during Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian exclave. Israeli leaders have publicly backed a proposal by US President Donald Trump to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East."