Analysis by Rickey Singh
ONE WEEK after the bizarre execution of President Moammar Gadhafi and his subsequent secret burial in an unmarked grave in the Libyan desert, the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted last Thursday to end tomorrow the international military operations it had approved, by majority vote back in March this year. Conscious of the division that existed when it endorsed a ‘no-fly zone’ resolution to ‘protect civilians’, as claimed, and now anxious to avoid another division, or worse, a likely veto — over a request from the transitional regime in Tripoli to extend the military mission until year-end — the Security Council chose to effectively end its war mandate in oil-rich Libya from tomorrow.
Yet to take shape, and expected shortly, is the independent investigation that the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights called for last week to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of the Libyan leader in his hometown of Sirte on the morning of October 20. Coincidentally, his death came amid the latest bombing raid by NATO aircraft that were providing cover for the anti-Gadhafi ground forces in the war zones.
From a Caribbean regional perspective, what remains puzzling is the very surprising public silence of the Heads of Government of our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to denounce the manner of Gadhafi’s death at the hands of his captors.
The only commendable exception to the deafening silence on the execution carried out on Gadhafi has been the Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, up to the time of writing this weekend.
Nor was a welcome gesture for the proposed UN probe into Gadhafi’s killing included in the text of a statement released on behalf of CARICOM last Friday by its current chairman, Prime Minister Denzil Douglas of St. Kitts and Nevis.
Since it cannot be that there is any departure from the stated commitment of our CARICOM governments to observance of the rule of law in the promotion and defence of ‘freedom and democracy’, then they seem to be doing a curious political dance by failure, to date, to collectively speak out against the manner of the Libyan leader’s death.

Contrasting statements
The execution on October 20 occurred some eight months after the spreading anti-Gadhafi ‘liberation’ uprising by a widening armed rebellion that had the good fortune of support from bombing raids by NATO’s war planes.
However, when Prime Minister Douglas issued his statement last Friday, as CARICOM chairman, on the demise of the Libyan strongman of some 42 years, the focus was placed, strangely, on a call for “Libyans to lay down their arms in peace (sic)”, and for the international community to “intensify efforts to promote reconciliation and nation-building.” But NO mention of the act of execution of Gadhafi.
In contrast, by last Monday, when Dominica’s Prime Minister Skerrit, unequivocally condemned the extra-judicial killing of Gadhafi, CARICOM leaders appeared to have suffered a loss of speech over that vengeful execution — a  development that must be an affront to all who subscribe to the rule of law as a civilized judicial process.
Prime Minister Skerrit was categorical in declaring at a press conference in Roseau:  “Like any civilized society, we will never condone the manner in which a person is killed, irrespective of who the person is, or what he may have done, or alleged to have done…Extra-judicial killing should never be supported or promoted…”
Whether he, too, felt that the CARICOM chairman’s statement was flawed or inadequate in its core message, hence his intervention, Skerrit is also quite supportive of the call by the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner for a thorough and independent investigation into the circumstances  surrounding Gadhafi’s death.

UN’s probe call
I am of the view that Skerrit’s Community colleagues would also welcome an independent probe into Gadhafi’s death, and may, on reflection, recognise the relevance of condemning his execution as being contrary to the rule of law.
If so, they have an obligation to issue a further official statement to make pellucid where they COLLECTIVELY stand on both the manner of Gadhafi’s death and the UN’s call for an independent investigation.
Prime Minister Douglas was most surprisingly silent on the manner of Gadhafi’s death, knowing, as he certainly does, that a number of governments in CARICOM had functioning diplomatic relations with Tripoli while he ruled, and disbursed aid of various sorts to them.
While being silent on the critical factor of extra-judicial killing as a gross violation of the rule of law, Dr. Douglas found time to refer to the older issue of violations of “human rights against former members of the Libyan government and minority groups, including migrants, from Sub-Saharan countries…”
For his part, President Obama, who had previously assured that Iraq-style ‘regime change’ in Tripoli was not the objective of the UN resolution, was to declare on the day Gadhafi was killed:
“Today, we can definitively say the Gadhafi regime  has come to an end, and one of the world’s longest serving dictators is no more…Today’s events proved, once again, that the rule of the iron fist inevitably  comes to an end…”
Also true, President Obama, is that expedient mockings of the rule of law—as happened in Tripoli with regime change and the execution of Gadhafi — could prove dangerously counterproductive. Examples abound, and it is certainly not our Caribbean region’s concept of promoting and safeguarding ‘freedom and democracy’.
Question, therefore, is: Why this CARICOM political ‘dance’ on the brutal execution of Gadhafi, and failure to reaffirm commitment to the rule of law as the best way to promote ‘freedom and democracy’?
CARICOM is a small regional economic integration movement, but its diverse peoples undoubtedly feel that our Community’s Heads of Government have a moral and political obligation to collectively stand firmly in defence of savage violations of  the rule of law—even when the victim of extra-judicial killing happens to be a dictator like Libya’s Gadhafi.