‘We will never forget this day’

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[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/abuzgaya.jpg” caption=”Amal Abuzgaya, a McMaster Arts & Science student and spokesperson for the Canadian Libyan Council, in a screen capture from a television interview with Hamilton’s CHCH. Abuzgaya said the day dictator Moammar Gadhafi was killed is a day Libyans will never forget. “]When Amal Abuzgaya's parents came to Canada from their native Libya, they traded
oppression, tyranny and injustice for freedom unlike any they had ever experienced.

The death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi Thursday means that some of that
freedom may now reach the friends and extended family the Abuzgayas were forced to
leave behind.

“The Libyan people have been waiting for this day for decades,” said the Arts & Science
student, who also acts as spokesperson for the Canadian Libyan Council, a national
advocacy group formed to raise awareness about the revolution in the North African
country. “The battle is finally over.”

Abuzgaya was born in Canada but lived for a number of years in Libya, which had been
under Gadhafi's rule since he seized power in a 1969 military coup. A regular visitor to
her parents' homeland, she had been in the country just a month before the revolution
began in February.

“There were no freedoms at all, just a culture of fear,” she said. “There was no such
thing as speaking your mind there. But that started to change with the revolution. Now
the tyranny is over.”

Abuzgaya, who hopes to start a master's degree next fall, plans to write her last exam
at McMaster in December and fly to Libya the next day, where she will reconnect with
friends and family who had been difficult to visit during the unrest. She also hopes to
follow in her father's footsteps by helping the country rebuild in whatever way she can.

Her father, Dr. Fathi Abuzgaya, an orthopedic surgeon, was part of a contingent of
Libyan-Canadian medical professionals who travelled to the country in the early days of
the uprising to treat those wounded in the fighting, which claimed thousands of lives.

“We've been described as brave doctors,” he told the Toronto Star in an interview, “but
the real brave people are really the people of Libya.”

After organizing a February rally held at Toronto's Dundas Square in support of the
revolution, Amal was last night able to help organize another gathering celebrating its
outcome.

“The feeling is indescribable,” she said. “We will never forget this day.”