A FREEDOM SONG...

By A Lebanese Freedom Fighter

Suffocating under the Assad Dictatorship, Syrian-occupied Lebanon remains today in the darkest age of its history. The situation is deteriorating daily under a repressive occupation regime. Lebanese citizens are arrested and shipped to Syrian jails without due process. The Syrian occupation regime has restricted freedom of expression and assembly. The Syrian-trained security forces arbitrarily arrest Lebanese citizens and interrogate them without charges, often falsely accusing them of collaboration with Israel simply because they oppose the Syrian occupation. Torture and Human Rights abuses is still common practice in Syrian and Lebanese jails as stated by the US STATE DEPARTMENT 1995-96 reports

In 1996, Amnesty International (AI), in an appeal to the puppet president Hrawi, stated that members of the Syrian Intelligence arrested the Lebanese woman Maghy Karam in March. She has been moved since to Syria where she is being tortured. AI said that Maghy was sentenced to a 9 month jail sentence for collaborating with Israel. Her arrest was connected to her son's travel to Sweden via Israel for education. In a similar development, the Lebanese branch of Human Rights Association in an open letter to president Hrawi asked him to seek the release of 210 Lebanese detainees in Syria. The association said the arrests, despite the “Cooperation and Brotherhood” treaty between Lebanon and Syria, are contradictory to the Lebanese constitution.

Meanwhile, the Media has been silenced through a restrictive “AudioVisual Media Law”. Unions are banned from demonstration through massive deployment of the security forces (6 times in 1996 alone). The judicial system has been usurped and the head of the supposedly independent “Constitutional Council” , Mr Wajdi Mallat resigned, citing pressures by political powers. The legislative bodies are filled by Syrian controlled deputies who were elected in sham elections orchestrated by the Syrian Secret services and under the tank barrels of 40,000 Syrian troops who are still in the country in violation of the US sponsored Taef accord. In south Lebanon, Syria wages a proxy-war against Israel through imported Iranian fanatics and continue to harbor Terror International with bases in the Bekaa valley and offices in Damascus.

About 1.5 million Syrians have entered the country illegally and compete with the 3 million Lebanese for scarce jobs at all levels from manual labor to construction contracts while 40% of the Lebanese labor force remain unemployed (according to Banque Audi Economic Analysis 1996). The occupation Regime has pawned the life of the future Lebanese generations by ballooning the national debt through international borrowing of Billions of dollars which found their way into the pockets of the occupation regime officials, the Syrian army commanders, and the Syrian ruling class. The environmental conditions have also reached catastrophic levels. The occupation regime’s corrupt officials have collected bribes and permitted the dumping of Toxic waste by Italian and German manufacturing firms. The minister of the environment has declared that “the air pollution level in Lebanon is three times its levels in industrialized nations. Its water is 70% polluted”. Thanks to the “brotherly” Syrian occupation, Lebanon, the greenest and most water-rich country in the Middle East, has been transformed into a dumpster.

All our leaders are in Diaspora such as Prime Minister Michel Aoun who is in exile in France. Those leaders who stayed, were assassinated by the Syrian Intelligence services such as Kamal Jumblat, Rashid Karame, Bechir Gemayel, Renee Moawad to name a few. Collaborators were appointed as a mask. Meanwhile the US and the world pay lip service and proclaim their support for the “Independence of Lebanon” while practically blessing the Syrian occupation. Some analysts explain this appeasement of the Syrian dictatorship as the price to pay to lure the Syrians into the Middle East peace process, tame their Narco-Terrorism, and reward them for their support of the liberation of Kuwait from the Dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the on-going containment of Iraq.

In Summary, the pillage of Lebanon has reached intolerable proportions under the Assad Dictatorship. Its free will falsified. Its children and brains seeking visas at the doors of foreign embassies and sniffed by dogs in international airports. Its environment poisoned. Its economy looted. Its freedoms confiscated. Its identity diluted by the nastiest of occupations; a black hearted Syrian Dictatorship from the middle ages. But despite the attempted annihilation, we shall never abdicate our right to our Identity, Freedom and Human Dignity in our Homeland. Humanity deserves better at the doors of the 21st century