WASHINGTON, D.C.- In an apparent effort to control the public narrative in the wake of rare protests that have spread throughout Libya, the country’s government is threatening to withdraw scholarship funding from citizens studying in the U.S. unless they attend pro-government rallies in Washington this weekend, Al Jazeera has learned.

Several Libyans studying in the U.S. said they and their peers have received phone calls this week from a man employed by the Libyan embassy instructing them to join rallies in the capital on Friday and Saturday.

The man told the students that their government-funded scholarships would be cut off if they did not attend.

The apparent coercion comes as protesters in Libya attempted to mount a “day of rage” on Thursday and continued their calls for the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year reign as Libya’s leader.

At least 14 people are reported to have died as a result of unrest that began on Monday and has broken out in cities throughout the country, including Tripoli, the capital, and Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, where most of the deaths have been reported.

The Libyan embassy employee in the U.S. told students that the government would pay for all the expenses associated with attending the pro-government rally, including a plane ticket, hotel room and food, the students said.

They spoke with Al Jazeera on the condition they remain anonymous because they feared retribution from the government if their identities were made public.

A student, identifying himself as a cultural liaison, said he had a list of names and that the government would note those who attended.

Another student who also received a late-night phone call on Tuesday said that the caller, a man he knew, told him he was carrying out government instructions. The student said he too was threatened with the loss of his scholarship.

Both students said they had spoken with more than a dozen peers who also reported receiving similar threats.

Abdulla Darrat, a 28-year-old co-founder of the “Enough Gaddafi” movement who is based in New York City, told Al Jazeera he had heard of the threats as well.

The Libyan embassy in Washington referred questions about the coercive phone calls to Alsudik Ali, a second secretary at the mission, who had not responded by early afternoon local time on Thursday.

One of the students said he had called Libyan peers whom he considered close friends to ask about the threats, but he said he was too afraid to ask other Libyan student acquaintances because he feared they might report him to the government.

Darrat said his group had applied for permits to protest at the Libyan embassy on Friday and Saturday and planned to hold a demonstration at the White House on Saturday as well.

A pro-government student group has applied for permits to demonstrate next to them, he said.

Darrat compared the government’s current public relations effort with the event it staged during Gaddafi’s visit to the United Nations in September 2009, when the Libyan government erected a stage that featured African dancers and a large television screen that projected Gaddafi’s one-hour-and-40-minute speech to the General Assembly.

Darrat and others claimed the Libyan government had paid citizens in the United States to attend pro-Gaddafi rallies during the visit.

Some were given $2,000 and took the money “as a way to get out of studies and enjoy a weekend,” one of the students said.

“This time it’s much different,” he said. “The embassy officials are desperate and are now attempting to force us to go. This an act of desperation.”

When Libyans protest against the government, Darrat said, they usually anticipate that the government will retaliate somehow.

“If you refuse to go [to the protest], it’s not just the scholarship, it is when you return, you will have problems,” he said.

Many Libyans are well aware of the heavy hand the government has applied, even internationally, since Gaddafi fully consolidated power in the late 1970s, Darrat said.

Activists hope that the tens of thousands of Libyans they say have taken to the streets around the country finally will bring an end to the Gaddafi era and its repressive tactics.

The government has shown no signs of making any concessions to the demonstrators thus far, but for some of the students in the United States, the sight of citizens publicly calling for Gaddafi’s ouster was enough to inspire them to defy the embassy’s demands to come to Washington DC.

Other students have said that the government has blocked Internet access and severed communications with eastern parts of the country.

Attention has now turned to Tripoli where protests could prove decisive, according to many students.

Another student, who also has been watching videos of the protests on social media websites, said he was inspired to refuse the embassy’s instructions by recent upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt — where longtime leaders both stepped down from power following mass protests.

“I mean today people are protesting in the different cities in my country, now I saw the videos on the Facebook and YouTube,” said one man, who told the embassy officer he could not postpone his upcoming exam.

 “I’m not afraid anymore, because I’m feeling that it’s gonna be over, Gaddafi’s gonna be over, it’s happened in Tunisia and Egypt …  This guy, he’s not gonna [step] down, he’s gonna be kicked out.”