Geneva, March 1 (IANS/EFE) The wave of repression unleashed by Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya ‘constitutes crimes against humanity’, Mexican foreign relations secretary Patricia Espinosa said here.
‘We are offended and it seems absolutely intolerable because it constitutes crimes against humanity, the brutal repression of peaceful groups that we have seen in Libya,’ Espinosa said in her address to the UN Human Rights Council’s 16th regular session, which began Monday.
‘In light of the legitimate demands of the citizens, the only acceptable arms are reason and justice,’ Espinosa said, adding that ‘the violence used by the Gaddafi regime against its own people’ was unacceptable.
Espinosa congratulated the UN Human Rights Council for issuing a declaration Friday recommending that the General Assembly suspend Libya and calling for the creation of a commission to investigate the human rights violations committed in the north African country.
‘We cannot accept behaviour like that of the Libyan government in the 21st century,’ Espinosa said.
Last week, President Felipe Calderon condemned the Gaddafi regime’s violent response to the protests.
Calderon said he was deeply saddened about the situation in north Africa, especially over the way ‘the civilian population is being truly massacred, particularly in the case of Libya’.
Mexico has expressed ‘the federal government’s rejection, and my own outrage over this, and the call we are making for them to stop using aviation, heavy artillery, etcetera, to massacre hundreds of innocent victims. We cannot accept this’, Calderon said.
There has been a mass uprising against Libyan leader Gaddafi who has ruled the country for the past 41 years. The unrest in Libya has been inspired by the successful uprising in Tunisia and Egypt.
–IANS/EFE
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