Moammar Gadhafi Graffiti: Daring to Mock a Dictator

by Jordan Yerman | October 21, 2011 at 07:47 am

381 views | 4 Recommendations | 0 comments

The People vs Moammar Gadhafi: a Rebellion in Graffiti

When one dictator controls the nation's military and police power, the people find themselves unable to protest openly: the end of Moammar Gadhafi's reign bears that out, with countless acts of military brutality against civilians.

As we searched for photos to back up our coverage of the civil war in Libya, which ended in the death of Moammar Gadhafi, we found some striking images of anti-Gaddafi graffiti.

Once Gaddafi was deposed, it was only a matter of writing the final chapter: I don't think that anyone reasonably expected him to be taken alive. In the period between the fall of Tripoli and the dictator's death after being pulled from a concrete pipe, people finally had a chance to express their hatred of the man who brutalized his population while buying the friendship of the surrounding nations.

Sometimes ink and spray-paint are your only weapons.

Photographer Majid Saeedi was in Benghazi during the final push to capture or kill Gadhafi, and did exactly what I'd have done... take loads of graffiti photos (However, only Neo could leap the skill gap between he and I). You can learn a lot about a city by its graffiti.

Check out the Gadhafi graffiti photoset below. I found them while looking for photos of Gaddafi's body in the makeshift morgue (like everyone else was). These images, though, struck me as compelling enough to deserve their own story.