Libyan genocide

The Libyan genocide, also known in Libya as Shar (Arabic: شر, lit. 'Evil'),^: 98 was the genocide of Libyan Arabs and the systematic destruction of Libyan culture, particularly during and after the Second Italo-Senussi War between 1929 and 1934. During this period, between 83,000 and 125,000 Libyans were killed by Italian colonial authorities under Benito Mussolini. Over 25% of the population of Cyrenaica had been killed, resulting in a population decline from 225,000 to 142,000 civilians. However, the total number of Libyan deaths during the entire Italian colonial period is estimated to be much higher, with estimates placing the number at 250,000–300,000, 500,000 and up to 750,000.

This period was marked by a brutal campaign characterized by widespread major Italian war crimes, including ethnic cleansing, mass killings, forced displacement, forced death marches, settler colonialism, the use of chemical weapons, the use of concentration camps, mass executions of civilians and refusing to take prisoners of war and instead executing surrendering combatants. The indigenous population, particularly the nomadic Bedouin tribes, faced extreme violence and suppression in an attempt to quell Senussi resistance to colonial rule. The Italian military killed half of the Bedouin population of Libya between 1928 and 1932.

The genocide was based on a racist and fascist colonial plan to incite settler colonialism and settle poor Italian peasants in Libya. About 110,000 Libyan civilians were forced to march from their homes to the harsh Libyan desert and were then interned in Italian concentration camps in Libya. Between 60,000 and 70,000 mostly rural people, including women and children, and their 600,000 animals died of diseases and were starved to death.

News about the genocide was heavily suppressed by Fascist Italy, evidence was largely destroyed, making remaining files in Italian concentration camps in Libya difficult to find even after the end of Fascist rule in Italy in 1945. The history that Libyans recorded in their Arabic oral history has remained hidden and unexplored in systematic fashion.^: 40 As a result, Italian colonization and atrocities in Ethiopia are better studied and more well known than Libyan cases.^: 40 It was not until 2008 that Italy apologized for its killing, destruction and repression of the Libyan people during its colonization of Libya, and stated that this was a "complete and moral acknowledgement of the damage inflicted on Libya by Italy during the colonial era".