North Africa

Mrs Parsons in Tripoli

A tale from Tripoli:

Several primary school teachers recount similar stories of young pupils being questioned by school employees aligned to the regime’s Revolutionary Committee Movement, which is being used to suppress dissent.

The conversations they have with these children, as young as eight years old, are along the lines of: “How are your parents? Are they sad about what’s happening in the country? What have they been saying? What news channels are you watching at home?”

All, it seems, in an effort to establish whether the students have parents or relatives that are potentially opponents of the regime.

Poor old Mrs Parsons:

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party.