Daniel Akill's Blog | 330: LEBANESE ARMY FORCEFULLY AND VIOLENTLY BREAKS UP PEACEFUL PROTEST AGAINST LEBANESE DETAINEES IN SYRIAN PRISONS

330: LEBANESE ARMY FORCEFULLY AND VIOLENTLY BREAKS UP PEACEFUL PROTEST AGAINST LEBANESE DETAINEES IN SYRIAN PRISONS

23 July, 2008

LEBANESE ARMY FORCEFULLY AND VIOLENTLY BREAKS UP PEACEFUL PROTEST AGAINST LEBANESE DETAINEES IN SYRIAN PRISONS

Protestors demand release of Lebanese prisoners in Syria – before 1975 to 2005

The Daily Star via Yahoo! Alerts Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Dear readers and fellow-Apes; no comments other than the short comment in-between. However, kindly read my postings: 18 / 40 / 49 / 67 / 260 / 328/ 329

BEIRUT: Parents, relatives, and friends of Lebanese citizens who disappeared between 1975 and 2005 gathered around 10:30am on Monday morning next to the presidential palace in Baabda, where Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem was expected to arrive; protesting against the detention in Syria of their family members and relatives. Several protestors held pictures of their detained or lost relatives as well as banners with slogans in Arabic: no diplomatic relations before the return of Lebanese held in Syrian prisons and there are Lebanese prisoners not only in Israel, but in Syria as well.

The demonstration took an unfortunate turn of events as the Lebanese Armed Forces – the Lebanese Army – violently forced the protesters to move away as they were trying to intercept Walid Moallem's convoy or block the road; they were forcefully pushed back and beaten up by LAF forces. Some demonstrators suffered wounds as a result.

The protest had been organized with the help of the civil society representatives, human-rights associations and members of local and international non-governmental organisations who had held similar demonstrations in the past, but that time, the protest was called to coincide with Moallem's visit to Lebanon. The founder of Support for Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), an NGO which has longed worked to uncover the fate of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons confirmed the existence of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons.

In a news conference after his parliamentary bloc's meeting on Monday, Free Patriotic Movement leader, MP Michael Aoun, said that clashes between demonstrators and the LAF were truly unfortunate and that the new government would double its efforts to uncover the fate of detainees in Syrian prisons as the fate of these missing people could not be ignored.

By the way, and for your information; dear readers and fellow-Apes; let us hope that the 600 soldiers he deserted – he abandoned his wife and three daughters, too – and left them to face the invading Syrian hordes on the night he fled in his orange pyjamas to the French Embassy and later to France are part of those detained in Syrian prisons and let us hope THEY, AND ALL THE OTHERS, ARE STILL ALIVE.

According to a researcher with Human Rights Watch who took part in the protest, the demonstrators – mostly mothers and sisters of detainees – were violently pushed by the LAF who used their rifle butts to disperse the crowd. He said that the protesters were un-armed, so there was no need for the army to resort to such violence.

The head of Union for Lebanon – or Onion for Lebanon – told reporters that the detainees issue was more important than Lebanese-Syrian diplomatic relations or the border demarcation between the two neighboring countries.

Five prisoners and 200 bodies were handed over to Hezballah by Israel last Wednesday as part of a prisoner swap deal.

Despite the brawl with the LAF, the protestors were able to send a seven-point letter to President Michael Suleiman who, in his inaugural speech, expressed his will to deal with the issue. The letter called for including the prisoners' issue in the upcoming ministerial statement. It also called for the formation of a national commission to look into the issue of detainees in Syria, as well as creating a DNA database through the missing people's relatives, and an international investigative commission, as a last resort, to find out the whereabouts and the fates of the missing Lebanese in Syrian prisons, and to try any that committed any crimes against humanity – including their collaborators.

Walid Moallem remarked during a news conference on Monday on the existence of Syrian detainees in Lebanese prisons. The Daily Star was told that there were actually names of Syrians who disappeared in Lebanon during the 1975-90 Civil War, but it was surprising that Syria never dealt with this issue when it was in control of the country. However, information about Syrian detainees in Lebanese prisons could be easily made available as Lebanese prisons were accessible to the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations.

Syria has to provide a correct list of Lebanese and non-Lebanese detainees abducted on Lebanese soil. While the Syrian authorities have always been reluctant to give out information about Lebanese prisoners, some detainees' parents said they had proof of their children's imprisonment in Syria as they had been able to contact and sometimes visit them. The detainees had never even been given a fair trial.

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