The Tebu community in Libya plans on creating its own legal system, following its membership suspension at the Constituent Assembly (CA).

A minority ethnic group that has inhabited southern Libya for thousands of years, the Tebu have long been marginalised – Muammar El Gaddafi even confiscated the citizenship of some members and banned them from getting education, health and other basic needs. They were among the first Libyans to rise up against Gaddafi in 2011.

 The Tebu community in Libya plans on creating its own legal system, following its membership suspension at the Constituent Assembly (CA).

A minority ethnic group that has inhabited southern Libya for thousands of years, the Tebu have long been marginalised – Muammar El Gaddafi even confiscated the citizenship of some members and banned them from getting education, health and other basic needs. They were among the first Libyans to rise up against Gaddafi in 2011.

The Tebu established the first Tebu Constituent Assembly this past August, which will later make laws and draft a Constitution after naming its members and chairperson, said Khalid Wahli, one of two Tebu community members in the CA.

The Tebu are going their own way, because the Arab majority in the CA refused to apply the principle of consensus, which is at the core of the constitutional declaration.  The principle contains five issues: the identity of the state, the official language, the flag, the national anthem and the name of the state. 

Wahli believes that Arabs want to impose their identity and language as the only ones in Libya while ignoring the languages and identities of minorities.  In an interview with Correspondents, Wahli explained what the Tebu hope to achieve in the coming months.    

What exactly is the Tebu Constituent Assembly planning to do?

The Tebu Constituent Assembly will achieve our people’s goals by all the means that we think are appropriate. My colleague is from the western part of Tebu region and I am from the eastern part and we are both members of the AC. We are now in a process of putting its internal laws and appointing its members and chairperson, which will be done by the end of this month

.  We are not going to beg them for our rights, these are basic human rights for the  Tebu people in south Libya as indigenous people.  What we are asking for is not a new thing, it has been implemented all over the world and in neighbouring countries. All the countries have recognized the rights of the indigenous and minority people, so we are not asking for a bestowal.

We as Tebu people have challenged Gaddafi himself when nobody else in Libya could have done so, and we were among the first who participated in the uprising of 17th February. So we do not want to go back to the marginalization and the exclusion period, be treated as second-class citizens and be excluded from Libya’s resources. We shall not give up our fight to get our rights. That is why we suspended our membership at the CA and established the Tebu Constituent Assembly

Why did you suspend your membership in the CA?

We did so for one reason, the CA never respected the constitutional declaration that said in its article 30, there should be the principle of consensus between Arab and the minorities (Tebu, Tawariq and Amaziq).

What happened is that they did not care about this point, and they continued the work of the Constitution despite our objections over many things in the Constitution.  That is why we boycotted the elections twice in 2014.

The boycott has put pressure on them and they quickly have to return article 30 of the principle of the consensus and we got back to the constitution work in March and participated in the elections.

So why did you boycott the CA again and announce your own AC as the Tebu community?

When we returned to the constitutional assembly we had another disagreements over the issues of identity, language, representation of the constitution assemblies, local governor, and transitional justice. The majority wanted to impose its own opinion on these issues – of course, we refused that.

Even though the United Nations gathered us in Salalah city in Oman to discuss the disagreements for three weeks, we found that they we are not really clear about the issues of the identity of the country and other issues, so we boycotted it again and told our people in the south and the UN about what happened … So that was enough reason for us to establish our own AC, which will make its own Constitution and laws in the end, as long as they are insisting on imposing their views. But the Tawariq community returned back to the CA.

What exactly do you hope to gain?

We want the Constitution of Libya to recognize that Libya is a diverse country where there are many minority ethnic groups, such Tebu, Tawariq and Amaziq. We want a clear article in the Constitution recognizing our right to be different.

We also want representation in the language committee, legislature, the human rights council and the diversity council. We also asked for independent counties for Tebu in the south, we do not want our counties to be part of the bigger ones because we want Tebu’s voices to be heard. We faced so many problems in the past because we did not get independent counties. We also want to be part of the transitional justice councils.

We also rejected all the forms of discrimination in the Constitution based on colour, sex, religion, etc.

In the CA we rejected the demand of reviewing Libyan citizenship and withdrawing some of them – this is a very dangerous article in the Constitution.

 In 1994 Gaddafi threatened citizenship for political reasons against some Tebu people and then they were stateless. As a consequence, they were not entitled to their basic needs.

 We believe that such an article in the law would open the door again for racists to do the same against Tebu people. We think this article should not put in the Constitution and withdrawing people’s citizenship should be done by the sector of the passports in the interior ministry if there is a genuine reason for that.