"I was under the regime's eyes all my life."
Fathi Khalifa, 42, fled his native Libya twenty years ago, following a crackdown in his hometown of Sabha. He has since lived in Morocco and, most recently, in Holland, where he settled three years ago as a refugee. Trained as a chemical engineer in Russia, he spoke out against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi on international news channels and was subsequently threatened by the officials of the regime and by the dictator himself. He received letters demanding his silence; two close friends were jailed because of a telephone call from him. In 2008, the Libyan authorities in Morocco, where he had settled and started a business, refused to return his citizenship documents. The Moroccan government told him that "we can't protect you any more." "So that is why," he said, "I went to the UNHCR office in Rabat and they immediately protected me and proposed to me political asylum in the Netherlands." Fathi was visiting Geneva on October 20, 2011, when news broke that Gaddafi had been discovered and killed in his hometown of Sirte. He was overwhelmed by the reports, checking urgently with friends on his mobile phone, and searching for confirmation online. "It's not just (for my sake)," he said later. "It's for my people's (sake): for them, I am very happy." Fathi Khalifa, along with another refugee living in Holland, the Ethiopian journalist Fasil Yenealem, is the subject of a documentary that will show at the humanitarian film festival "Movies That Matter'', March 22-28, 2012, in The Hague. For more information about refugees, visit unhcr.org
