Libya, Benghazi March 3, 2011.
At sunset the painter Hassan Khalifa Sadawi turns his back on the enemy for a short while. It is time to pray.
One of his volunteer rebel friends stands further down the beach with a anti-aircraft missile on his shoulder. Yesterday the city of Brega, a couple of hours away by car - a few minutes for a fighter jet - was bombed. Antaircraft guns and missiles are placed all around the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
Gadaffis security personnel have harassed Hassan for many years. The trouble stared when he refused to paint Gadaffis so called “Green book” on a wall. He was fired from his work and sent to prison for six months. For crimes “against the principle of Gadaffi” he laughs.
Seven months later Gadaffi was killed by rebels.
Tunis, January 2011
Tunisia has an oversized police force. Compared to a country like Sweden its police is nine times larger. The men in blue are very unpopular, having controlled the country for the dictator Ben Ali with brute force for so many years. During the uprising the more popular military several times stepped in between demonstrators and violent police officers. An older man has fallen during a police attack on Aveune Habib Bourguiba in central Tunis. He pleads for restraint but the police are more violent than ever. The attacks with teargas and live ammunition gets more and more frequent. At least 78 people had died so far.
Bahrain, Manama, February 2011
Ahmed Ali became one of many victims for the deadly violence from the Bahranian police. The local uprising against the oppression and corruption of the ruling family gathered mostly around Pearl square in the capital. Security police and Saudi military put down the revolt a few weeks and many deaths later. Ahmed Ali’s friends and family say a final farewell at the Salmaniya hospital in Manama. He was 22 years old.
Libya, Aydabiya, March 2011
A cigarette keeps the worst of the stench away when the blood is cleaned of a stretcher that just arrived from the frontline. The life of the soldier could not be saved, he lost to much blood during the transport. Volunteers man the hospital and makes it functional in spite of a lack of almost everything. Many of the patients need to be evacuated to the more advanced hospital care in Benghazi 160 kilometers away.
Tunisia, Tunis January 2011
When the fruit salesman Muhammad Bouazizi in desperation over poverty and police harassment set fire to himself December 17th in the small village of Sidi Bouzid nobody could predict what would happen. The day after large protests started around Tunisia and after a few weeks the dictator Ben Ali and his government was toppled. The wave of protests continued eastwards and swept away dictators in Libya, Egypt and also put Syria and Yemen in turmoil.