How To Make Gaddafi Disappear From Libyan Currency

DIE WELT (Germany)

TRIPOLI - Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi has been dead since Oct. 2011, but Libyans are still faced with his image daily on their one, 20 and 50 dinar notes.

However on Feb. 17 – the second anniversary of the start of the revolution – the Libyan National Bank put new notes into circulation, reports Die Welt.

Instead of Gaddafi’s image on the one dinar note there is a now revolutionary scene, while the 50 dinar note features a Benghazi lighthouse instead of the former despot. Benghazi, in eastern Libya, is Libya’s second largest city and was a hotbed of the uprising.

The image showing Gaddafi with African leaders on the 20 dinar note has been replaced by a building important to the country’s cultural heritage: the Atiq mosque in Awjila, the oldest mosque in North Africa.

Other Libyan bills were changed only slightly. The 10 dinar note still features Omar al-Mukhtar, who fought against the Italian colonialists and was executed by the Italians in 1931. He was and is considered a national hero – by Gaddafi, even though he was from Benghazi – and particularly by the revolutionaries who named a brigade after him.

The old Libyan bank notes are to be gradually pulled from circulation.

WORLDCRUNCH

Premium stories from Worldcrunch's own network of multi-lingual journalists in over 30 countries.

WORLDCRUNCH

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Migrant Lives

Migration

What's Driving More Venezuelans To Migrate To The U.S.

With dimmed hopes of a transition from the economic crisis and repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro, many Venezuelans increasingly see the United States, rather than Latin America, as the place to rebuild a life..

Photo of a family of Migrants from Venezuela crossing the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum

Migrants from Venezuela crossed the Rio Grande between Mexico and the U.S. to surrender to the border patrol with the intention of requesting humanitarian asylum.

David Peinado via Zuma Press

Julio Borges

-Analysis-

Migration has too many elements to count. Beyond the matter of leaving your homeland, the process creates a gaping emptiness inside the migrant — and outside, in their lives. If forced upon someone, it can cause psychological and anthropological harm, as it involves the destruction of roots. That's in fact the case of millions of Venezuelans who have left their country without plans for the future or pleasurable intentions.

Their experience is comparable to paddling desperately in shark-infested waters. As many Mexicans will concur, it is one thing to take a plane, and another to pay a coyote to smuggle you to some place 'safe.'

Venezuela's mass emigration of recent years has evolved in time. Initially, it was the middle and upper classes and especially their youth, migrating to escape the socialist regime's socio-political and economic policies. Evidently, they sought countries with better work, study and business opportunities like the United States, Panama or Spain. The process intensified after 2017 when the regime's erosion of democratic structures and unrelenting economic vandalism were harming all Venezuelans.