Denmark admits that it massacred civilians in Libya
Featured image: Destroyed residential building in Surman, Libya, after it was bombed by Danish F16-fighter jets on the 20th of June 2011. Source: The Guardian
Denmark’s ministry of defense admitted the responsibility over airstrikes which killed civilians in Libya in 2011, after secret documents were declassified. The documents revealed that already in 2012 the Danish military had concluded that civilians were killed in the airstrikes, and that Danish imperialism had lied to the public about the case for over 10 years. The documents revealed the massacres of civilians by Danish imperialism in at least two airstrikes. One took place in Surman on June 20th 2011, and in it 12 people were massacred, five of them children. The other took place in Sirte on the 16th of September 2011, and in it a man, a woman and her unborn child were murdered. In both, the targets were residential buildings.
The airstrikes were carried out as part of the 2011 NATO military intervention in Libya. The US dominated military alliance claimed they ”answered the call of the UN to protect civilians”. In reality, they unleashed aggression to safeguard their own interests in the country and their military intervention turned it into a bloody battlefield, where mass graves of civilians are still discovered. In addition to Denmark other NATO members US, UK, France, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Norway and the Spanish State as well as their lackeys Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, conducted air strikes on civilian targets, and according to the 2012 report of a US “human rights” organization 72 civilians were killed in these air strikes. The number is most likely higher. According to the report, one third of the victims were children. This is possibly the first time any imperialist country who participated in the operation has admitted its responsibility over civilian deaths, but it was only because they were forced to admit it when the documents were made public and the information was shared by journalists. Targeting civilians is a war crime according to the international laws of war.
The US-dominated imperialist instrument UN and the imperialist media try to reduce the case into ”a missed opportunity of improving standards of accountability”, and the Danish State will ”assess whether the documents in question indicate that there were ramifications of such magnitude that an investigation should have been conducted at that time within the coalition or Nato framework”. Thus they try to wash the blood off their hands: the truth is that they murdered people, even children, with attacks which intentionally targeted residential buildings; they conducted a bloody military intervention to keep on exploiting the people of Libya.
