Is Libya's planned execution of six Bulgarian health-care workers on charges they infected 400 children with AIDs brutal or just?

Brutal

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by Melanie Wood

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Indeed it is brutality to execute anyone based on charges rather than evidence. The heart of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is all about protection for those of us fortunate enough to call ourselves Americans. Previously the Writ of Habeas Corpus protected the Western World and everyone else was left to take comfort in their respective religions. Blessed were those who lived safely under the watch of a benevolent ruler.

In Libya today Moammar Kadhafi (Gaddafi) remains the head of state. He assumed his role in 1969 with a bloodless coup' de etat overthrowing King Idris, and secured the title of Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of the Libyan Arab Republic. Since those early days he has been well known for switching alliances, ending up on President Carter's list of states sponsoring terrorism in 1979, remaining there today. Kadhafi is known for his swift and effective responses to any opposition. In April, 1980 he threatened Libyans who had fled abroad with assassination if they did not return to Libya by June 11. During that period of April and June nine Libyan expatriates were murdered. The emphasis is Kadhafi's swift and terrible justice.

I once lived in a dictatorship as an expatriate. I was a founding member of an underground famine and health-care organization. We silently stabilized thousands of nomadic famine refugees in our host country; a country that was soliciting Western funds on behalf of neighboring countries' victims pouring over their borders. Nothing was ever reported in the media about our own "in-house" starving victims. Our rescue work was secret and very dangerous for the local volunteers, some of whom were wives of the Ministers.

After a few years our organization suddenly evaporated when a group of American Senators came for a look-see. It would not be profitable if they discovered the Sudanese victims were getting no benefit from famine funds. The military then rounded up the 10,000 or so Sudanese nomads caring not a bit whether or not families were separated. They were packed like cattle in lorries and driven hundreds of miles back into the Sahara and dumped. Those that could began the Death Walk again.

The Senators never found out about this deadly little secret. Times got more difficult for expatriates to stay and I eventually returned to the US. Sometime later I read that a former colleague had resigned from the French Embassy and returned to collect the remnants of those swept-away victims, the male children, and establish orphanages for them. They are now known as The Lost Boys, those brave bands of boys who led the littlest children back through the desert to the River Nile.

Manipulations in third world countries are often brutal, especially when designed to disguise, mislead, and distort information or events. Most Westerners are unaware of life conditions in those parts of the world where each time a person awakes to see the sun is a gift.

Naturally, I question why these Bulgarians have been singled out and accused. I wonder if the health-care workers stumbled upon some unflattering facts. Murdering them would be efficient but it does sound barbaric. Perhaps assigning them with a horrendous deed, such as infecting little ones with AIDS would justify their murders? Kadhafi's swift and terrible justice could occur again without requiring evidence of either guilt or innocence.

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