One of the great crimes of the interwar years. A policy to occupy, dispossess and exploit the people of Libya, evolved into a real genocide with perhaps 100,000 dead and the majority of the population of Eastern Libya herded into desert concentration camps where sickness and starvation reduced the population by up to two-thirds. In addition to the over 10,000 executions, and forced emigration of tens of thousands more, the fascist imperialists wiped out crops and slaughtered tens of thousands of farm animals in a policy aimed at the annihilation of a majority of Libyan people, with the survivors to serve an influx of of tens of thousands of Italian colonizers. To my knowledge, know one has ever been held account for Italian imperialism murderous genocide. Put they did offer a meaningless apology eight decades after the fact. It is, of course, never to late. for justice.
‘The Fascist Murder Regime in the Italian Colonies’ by S.P. from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 No. 26. May 31, 1929.
From time to time there appear in the Italian newspapers. and also in foreign newspapers, Fascist reports of “glorious military operations” in Somaliland, Cirenaica or Libya. The latest reports speak of six collisions which took place in the month of April of this year in the neighbourhood of Tripolis. In these encounters dozens and hundreds of dead are left on the field. Whole caravans and tribes are slaughtered or dispersed. In the skirmishes which took place in April, over 2000 rebels took part on the one side against Fascist troops, regular soldiers, natives, aeroplanes, etc. on the other.
What is the explanation of this constant guerilla warfare in the colonies? The Fascists speak of “renegades” and “rebels”, who must be punished. But if the reports are read carefully, it is seen that in general it is a question of neither “rebels” nor “recalcitrants”. It is a question of peaceable Arab caravans, out on trading expeditions and attacked by Fascists; it is a question of bands of nomads or of small tribes coming in contact for the first time with the colonial rulers and subjugated by the Fascist “colonisers”. And what is the process of this subjugation? The men are slaughtered, their cattle confiscated and their women and children taken prisoners.
It is not mere chance that in all these reports mention is made only of captured women and children. All the bulletins mention with pride that practically all of the male rebels lost their lives in these collisions. As a matter of fact, the men are slaughtered in cold blood like cattle.
In the same Fascist reports mention is made of “groups of hundreds of rebels”, who are surrounded and completely destroyed. In these cases only about 10 or, at most, 20 rifles ever fall into the hands of the “subjugators”. Hundreds of “rebels” therefore enter the fight with a total of 20 rifles! No “rebel” ever succeeds in getting away and no “rebel” is ever taken prisoner.
In reality, what we here see is cold-blooded murder and ruthless extermination of the Arab population–a legally countenanced robbery, which Fascism exercises on the Arabs, in the way it has exercised it in Italy on the proletarians, on the Labour Chambers and on the revolutionary organisations.
Fascism does not want to subjugate the Arabs; it wants to exterminate them. The Fascists themselves describe the tactics they used in April against the “rebels”: “To watch the movements of the enemy, without attacking immediately, and even to encourage the penetration of recalcitrant groups across the border line of our occupation area, and then to fall upon them and destroy them.”
These are the tactics of robbers and brigands. A wandering tribe of the desert, which happens to cross the border of the territory occupied by the Fascists, is immediately converted into “recalcitratns” and “rebels”, is attacked and wiped out. If the tribe remains on its own side of the border, a thousand means are employed to decoy it across. Various groups of Arabs have in this manner “fallen into the trap” and been slaughtered. As the Fascist report triumphantly communicates, there is, indeed no better system!
What is the object of this organised murder, this colonial robbery? To rob the Arabs of their cattle, to harvest their crops and to confiscate their land. For whose benefit? To enrich the big colonisers princes, merchants and bankers of all kinds. By means of this organised robbery, the property of the natives finds its way into the hands of these business people.
Fascism calls these methods: exploiting the colonies. Only in this manner, only through murder, through robbery of the native population in favour of the capitalists and the bankers is it possible to mobilise the values contained in the colonies.
The fight of the Arabs against Fascist robbery is justified. It is a part of the proletarian anti-Fascist fight.”
The Italian proletarians in the factories and in the fields reach out their hands to the rebels in the colonies as to brothers in arms against Fascism, for proletarian freedom and for the freedom of the colonies.
International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n26-may-31-1929-inprecor.pdf
