REVOLUTION
 By: Freedom Fighter

This week, the Syrian-appointed puppet regime has committed another dreadful act of treason against the people of Lebanon.
On December 2/1999, Mr. Walid Achkar, a highly respected university student, and an active member in the Free Patriotic Movement's Youth & Students' Committee, was arbitrarily arrested at the main gate of the Balamand University (South Lebanon). Two Security men in civil attire arrested Mr. Achkar by force, without any legal documents and took him away in a civil car (red Renault 12), while a third security member drove Mr. Achkar's car and followed them.
Mr. Ackhar is now detained at the Amioun-Koura police headquarters without any legal basis or charges. He has been denied his right to legal advice and counseling, his rights are infringed upon, and none-of his family members or friends have been allowed to visit him. He has also been denied the right to see an attorney, while the Lebanese authorities refuse to declare on which charges Mr. Achkar was arrested for.

This is just one more flagrant example of the current Lebanese government of collaborators' disregard for the Lebanese people's basic human rights. Since 1990, the date of the total Syrian takeover of Lebanon, thousands of our people have been kidnapped, arrested, tortured, intimidated, and hundreds disappeared into Syrian jails. The Lebanese puppet regime is just a very thin mask for the on-going Syrian military occupation of Lebanon. The Syrian Dictator Assad, also know as the Butcher of Damascus, has imposed on occupied Lebanon a variety of treaties that surrendered what's left of our token sovereignty. The appointed president-collaborator, Emile Lahoud, made a statement this week offering the Lebanese "either the Syrian Occupation or a Civil War". The puppets have lost all shame and they insult and threaten the Lebanese people in the open.

Since 1990, Syria has restructured the Lebanese armed forces and eliminated all pro-independence elements. It imposed special "rehabilitation" programs in Syria for Lebanese officers and soldiers where they are drilled in the KGB-style dogma. The Syrian dictatorship has resorted to pillaging the resources of its Lebanese colony until the total impoverishment of the Lebanese. The middle class has disappeared. Poverty is widespread. Illiteracy is on the rise. The Mafia State persists with a superior propaganda machine. The Lebanese Diaspora refuses to return and build the Syrian farm. Liberties have long vanished. The press has been classified as "Not Free" by International bodies. Media Censorship has been imposed through direct arrests, kidnapping, and torture of journalists as well as through the aid of an Audio-Visual law that legislated the final restriction on what's left of our freedoms. The Syrian-Lebanese cooperation treaty has also allowed Syrian armed forces and secret services to arrest any Lebanese and kidnap her/him to Syria. Syria's jails are filled with Lebanese Freedom fighters who protested the Syrian occupation of our homeland. Lebanon has been retarded back to the 19th century and turned into a carbon copy of black hearted Syria. It is a shame that in this period of global awakening, we are being subjugated to the Stalinist Assad Dictatorship by the United States of America, Israel, and the rest of the world.

Mr Walid Ashkar, a College student, is known to be a pacifist protestor and consciencious objector. He rejected the Syrian occupation of Lebanon peacefully, in civilized ways, without violence, yet he has been arrested and his condition unknown. Mr Ashkar's arrest sends a powerful message to the Lebanese resistance. May be it is time we abandon the peaceful methods in favor of armed struggle. Since the result of our actions are met with oppression regardless of our methods, then why not chose methods that inflict the greatest pain on the police state and the Syrian occupation. Even if the Patriotic Current continues to choose peaceful methods, any and every Lebanese has the full right, and duty, to resist the Syrian occupation with any mean at our disposal. Whether agreed upon with our leadership or not, let us start a popular war inside Lebanon against the Syrian occupation forces. Bomb the hell out of Syrian military installations inside Lebanon and Syria. I call on the patriotic elements of the Lebanese armed forces to rebel and open fire on all Syrian troops stationed in our country. Burn their police headquarters. Chase the traitors out. Rain death on Syrian troops and let the mayhem begin. Enough is enough. The world has ignored our pleas and suffering and it is time we take matters in our own hands.

Death to The Assad Dictatorship
Long Live Free Lebanon