Sarah Birke
Last Updated: Mar 25, 2011
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Bugaighis, a mother of three, is just one of a group of women who have been at the vanguard of Benghazi's uprising. Away from the front lines where the east's men are battling to hold off pro-Qaddafi forces, women work side-by-side with men to keep the rebels fighting, society and the economy functioning and the uprising visible.
Day jobs have been shed, replaced by a spirit of volunteerism that has led to ad hoc committees and fledgling democratic institutions. Some, like Bugaighis, are members of the organisational institutions centred in the courthouse. She is joined by her sister Iman Bugaighis, a professor-turned-spokeswoman for the rebels, and by Salwa el Deghali, the women's representative on the council. But, as was the case in Egypt and Tunisia, women were involved in the protests from the start, and Libyan women across all classes and levels of education are now playing a role from providing food to keeping up numbers in the streets, regardless of the outcome of the rebellion.
The uprising of which Bugaighis was part began with calls for protests on February 17, leading to the pro-democracy Libyans being dubbed the "February 17 rebels". But it sparked two days earlier when Fathi Terbil, a fellow lawyer, was arrested. He is representing the families of the victims of the massacre in Abu Salim, a notorious Tripoli prison where human rights organisations say some 1,200 people, mainly political prisoners, were killed after they rose up in 1996 - yet many of the wives and mothers weren't told of the deaths until 2009.
This, says Bugaighis, was the final straw. "For 42 years we have not been able to say what we want," she says. But small fires - fuelled by Benghazi's lawyers, many of them women - were burning long before. In September last year, Bugaighis and others took to the streets when the head of the legal union - a Qaddafi appointment - failed to step down long after the end of his term.
The rest of this long and interesting article can be read here:
http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/africa/the-women-fighting-organising-feeding-and-healing-libya-s-revolution?pageCount=0 All photos below taken by Ivor Prickett for The National...Journalist Suzanne Himmi began writing the stories she heard on the
first days of the protests, hoping to give the people a voice.
She now writes daily for the new Libya newspaper.
Female students and teachers from Garyounis University march through
the streets of Benghazi in protest of the Qadaffi regime.
Dr Jasmine Sherif treats a man who was injured fighting in the streets
of Benghazi.
Khiria Abdul Salam's elder daughter holds her baby cousin in the
family's kitchen in Benghazi.
Mufreeda al Masri directs volunteers preparing meals that trucks will
deliver to the frontlines.