Serbians Express Support for Gaddafi

“Let’s all fifty thousand of us ‘report’ this group (the facebook page of the Libyan Youth Movement, LYM) and have it taken down,” says a comment left on the wall of a Facebook page ‘Support for Muammar al Gaddafi from the people of Serbia’.

As of Monday the group had some 62,000 members and the figure was rising hour by hour. The group’s aim, say its creators, is “to support the Libyan people and their leader Muammar al Qaddafi-ju in the fight against America and (the) West.”

Minor Serbian ultranationalist movement Nasi 1389, one of a plethora of far-right groups in the country, has been a vocal supporter of the fan page, though it has denied creating it.

“When the attack on Libya started, we felt solidarity because we remember the support of the Colonel Gaddafi and Libyan people to us [Serbia] when we were bombed in 1999,” Igor Marinkovic from Nasi 1389 told Balkan Insight.

He said that the organisation's support would not stop with social networking websites but would spread to rallies of support for Gaddafi and the distribution of printed materials on the “truth about Libya and Gaddafi”.

The Facebook social networking site has at least another ten such active pages all pledging support for Gaddafi.

Facebook pages that gather supporters of the Libyan revolution are being bombarded by comments and messages from Serbia, and although administrators are deleting the posts, the page of the LYM is covered with pro-Gaddafi comments from Serbia.

One says “Our only goal is to support the people of Libya against NATO bombs that were falling onto us 12 years ago”.  Thursday March 24th was the anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999.

The Libyan Youth Movement sent a letter to Serbian news agency Tanjug, suggesting that the Gaddafi supporters were being funded and organised by shadowy political hands.

“We suspect powerful political organisations and political parties are behind this pro-Gaddafi movement and urge the international community to urgently take appropriate action in this regard,” the letter reads.

In response, a comment left on the LYM page said “Sorry LYM…we’re doing it for free.”

Serbia has had close relations with Libya since the formation of the Non-aligned Movement in 1956. In the seventies,Yugoslavia and Libya were close business and military partners. The relationship developed in the nineties when Gaddafi had a close personal relationship with former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.

Libya was the first country to send aid to Serbia after NATO’s bombardment in 1999 and the only Arab country that publicly condemned the NATO action.  

Organisers of the Facebook group held a gathering on March 27 in Belgrade to express their “support to the Libyan people and Muammar Al Gaddafi and show that the Serbian people have not forgotten the support of Libya during the NATO bombing”.

Gaddafi has rejected overtures to recognise Kosovo’s independence, which Belgrade staunchly opposes.  Libya was one of 14 states that provided a submission to the International Court of Justice in favour of Serbia’s position that the declaration of independence of Kosovo was in violation of international law.