We refuse festivities of freezing
By: General Michel Aoun
(Translated by: Elias Bejjani)

Initially we were very happy when Israel confirmed its withdrawal date from South Lebanon. Our happiness stemmed from the fact that one of the two occupiers (Israel Syria) has decided to leave our country. Accordingly we called on the Lebanese people to share with us the joy of this imminent Israeli withdrawal event. The so- called Beirut government was extremely worried and considered the Israeli confirmed withdrawal plan a trap. Its officials even tagged all those Lebanese that welcomed the withdrawal plan as Israeli agents.

This puppet government has crossed the Israeli withdrawal event boundaries and turned it into a liberation festivity for south Lebanon. It has also superseded all the actual standards and concepts of liberation and forged each and every one of them. Its acts are treacherous, contradictory and inconsistent in nature. Its officials have adopted this mocking style as a governing pattern, and have been justifying contradicting stances simultaneously. They went too far with this circus-like behaviour revolving around advocating for their subservience and treason. We wonder if South Lebanon has actually returned back to Lebanon, and if so under what sovereignty it is now to justify the joyful drum beating and jubilation celebrations?

What is there for the Lebanese regime and its deceitful society to be proud of, when the Israeli withdrawal had forced thousands of innocent Lebanese citizens to flee out side the country’s borders? Why were the Southern women scared and the mothers escaped with their children to the Israeli camps? Is it not because of the threatening speeches’ uttered towards the Southern residents promising and voicing revenge and cold blood murder? This blood shedding savage policy has been hailed and adopted by the regime because an apparent inability to assume its security and judiciary responsibilities.

Under what jurisdiction the head of the state has uttered rhetoric empty assurances to his scared fleeing people and how could he ask them to return to their land and homes? Who would trust his reassurances when he personally has no say in any of the state’s affaires, and when his official role has been characterized by an on going shameful phenomenon of abandoning responsibilities and breaking oaths?

Where is the judiciary?
Where are the Security Forces?
Where is the nation’s army?
If all these three institutions were not prepared for such critical circumstances, then why they have been in existence?
Have these institutions made vehicles for imposing the state’s sovereignty and its Uni-thinking style on universities, to oppress freedoms and muffle free thinking?

What delight is in the triumph liberation festivities when the people of the liberated land have been forced by the liberators to flee the country fearing for their lives? The Southern people have been fighting courageously for the last 25 years, refusing to abandon the land they worship and the identity they honor. The successive Lebanese governments have abandoned them for quarter a century and left them isolated encountering unbearable circumstances. They are now paying the price of the occupier’s withdrawal in which they had no say as they have paid previously the price of the occupation that was forced on them.

This carton-like Lebanese state is required morally and legally to make public any initiative its successive governments has taken during the last twenty five years to rescue the Southern residents and these residents declined to accept. Then, and only then it can start prosecuting them and not before that. The Beirut regime is making the residents of the liberated territories, who are actually the victims, legally accountable for the occupation. The heroic Southern residents who resisted the occupation and refused to leave their land are now the target of reprisal and savage official campaign spearheaded by officials and politicians who were originally responsible for the occupation of the Southern region and for the pain, destruction, poverty, displacement, loses and sufferings of all the Lebanese people since 1975. The free world countries and UN should not allow this judicial mockery to be inflict on our innocent patriotic southern people.

To be joyful because Israeli has left our land, or forced to do so, is the norm, but to celebrate liberation at this time, is a premature act. Why? Because territories freed from the Israeli occupier have joined a country whose sovereignty is fully confiscated by another occupier, the Syrian. Meanwhile, festivities for liberation should take place only when all foreign occupying forces leave, and when the country reclaims its independence, sovereignty, freedom and its free decision making process. Then, and only then, under the umbrella of a free and independent judiciary the citizens who broke the nation’s law will face fair trials in accordance to law and principles of justice. In the meantime what we are now witnessing in occupied Lebanon is a biased, selective, unfair, revenges, double standard and politicized judiciary.

Till the day of actual liberation becomes a reality, we refuse to participate in festivities of freezing and leave its ecstasy for the drug addicts.
Long Live Free Lebanon
France May 27/2000
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