April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

ELIZABETH TAN: I think for the—certainly, there is a need to decongest the
area around the border in Tunisia. In Egypt, I would say that there is—that
the situation is better. There are less people there. And most of the
people crossing are Egyptian, so they are directly going to their homes. In
Tunisia, UNHCR is providing shelter, and agencies are providing food and
trying to set up sanitation facilities there, but I think the main need is
really to provide transportation for people to get home.
AMY GOODMAN: And food? How are people getting access to food? And
what about word that Muammar Gaddafi’s forces are now moving into the
border areas, where people have been able to go freely back and forth
until now?
ELIZABETH TAN: I think certainly there are a lot of humanitarian agencies,
and the governments of both Egypt and Tunisia are helping the people who
are at the borders. In terms of—I am based in Cairo. So, there are no
problems of people accessing the border, with the exception of people—
refugees and persons of—from sub-Saharan Africa who are stuck in their
homes, who are very afraid to move, as the other speaker on your program
was mentioning. UNHCR is very concerned about those people. But on the
eastern side, otherwise, the access to the border is OK.
AMY GOODMAN: Elizabeth Tan, I want to thank you for being with us,
deputy regional representative for the U.N. High Commission on Refugees.
She’s speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt.
Also, still with us, Professor Horace Campbell, professor of African
American studies at Syracuse University. Professor Campbell, I wanted to
read to you from The Guardian newspaper. This is a pseudonym,
Muhammad min Libya, who wrote this. But he said, "As the calls for foreign
intervention grow, I’d like to send a message to western leaders: Obama,
Cameron, Sarkozy. This is a priceless opportunity that has fallen into your
laps, it’s a chance for you to improve your image in the eyes of Arabs and
Muslims. Don’t mess it up. All your previous programmes to bring the east
and the west closer have failed, and some of them have made things even
worse. Don’t start something you cannot finish, don’t turn a people’s pure
revolution into some curse that will befall everyone. Don’t waste the blood
that my friend Ahmed spilt for me," he writes. He is speaking against
intervention, Professor Campbell.
HORACE CAMPBELL: I think that is a sentiment that is seen very clearly
from sectors of those who are hungry for freedom in Libya, because any
kind of intervention by the United States and NATO forces would send a
signal to anti-imperialist forces that the revolution in Libya has been
instigated by the West and would throw sentiments in favor of Gaddafi at
this moment when he’s carrying out massacres against the people. In fact,
I would think that the opportunistic and cynical elements in the military
establishment in the United States and Britain, in particular, are
calculating that keeping Gaddafi in power longer would be to the benefit
of the West, because it would destabilize the revolutionary forces in both
Egypt and in Tunisia. And I would think that the concern that is being
expressed by Lieberman, McCain and Hillary Clinton is not for the
revolution in Libya, but is a concern for oil and for the destabilization of
the Egyptian revolution, because of the long-term implications of this
revolution for Africa and the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: What about, Professor Campbell, the fact that it is
usually referred to as rebellions, uprisings, revolutions that are taking
place "in the Arab world"?