The Beri-lin Wall
The walls of shame
Beirut woke up this morning to “walls of shame” surrounding the Parliament Square (Nejmeh Square). The picture is so resenting to us citizens, owners of that public square, that one couldn’t but shed the light on some of the similarity with the Berlin Wall.
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989.
For those who aren’t familiar with the German history; after World War II, the Berlin Wall separated West Berlin (the island of freedom) — allied with the Western allies and politically aligned with the Federal Republic of Germany — from East Germany — ruled by the German Democratic republic a communist state occupied and controlled by the soviet forces — .
By definition, it was a physical wall dividing two different ideologies that ruled the world at that time and that, nowadays, remain under different naming conventions.
Needless to say, the wall was brought down in 1989 as a result of the end of the Cold War and massive revolutions on the East side calling for the reunification of Germany.
Back to Lebanon
On Sunday December 15th 2019, our revolution celebrated its 60th day. The Lebanese citizens are still in the streets calling for a radical revolution through a government that can save us from amateurism, incompetence and corruption leading to early parliamentary elections to reconstitute the stolen leadership of Lebanon.
The once peaceful demonstrations are escalating to become more violent in response to the political class turning a deaf ear to the demands and to the unnecessary use of force by the army and the riot police.
The speaker of the parliament, Nabih Berri, and the leader of a political party — closer to a militia actually — and ironically called the Amal (hope) party has not acknowledged the revolution’s requests yet; and apparently has taken the decision to crush it by barbaric force.
He himself “owns” and controls a dedicated parliamentary security police force that does not report to the official ministries. This force in fact is directly recruited from his party’s supporters and has been generously paid for the past forty years. Those who are supposed to be the people’s protectors in official uniforms, are now the protectors of this falling empire.
His party and followers feed on religious conflicts and would not even survive the birth of a secular government of equal individuals to which the revolution aspires. Those young, mostly uneducated and poor kids, are being fueled day and night with religion and hate against the peaceful revolution.
For the past week, they’ve been burning and attacking almost everything that they do not identify with. Namely, the revolutionaries raising the Lebanese flag. As well as the discussion tents in the Azariye square, enlighting the young generation about their basic rights as citizens in a state of the law; about the political systems that could fit Lebanon; about the electoral law that would ideally represent the people more accurately and many other talks that take place every night. Not to forget the cars parking in the streets of Beirut and the graffiti art works on the walls.
They even ferociously fight against the riot police, who “occasionally” try to stand up against them to protect the innocent people and the private properties. Nevertheless they’ve never dared arresting any of them.
It’s understandable, from a dictator’s point of view, that such a revolution will destroy his empire. An empire, built on the grounds of a rotten public sector, and that has normalized corruption and delegated all social and security projects to a mafia that sucked the dollar out of its people’s pocket and split the trophy on the ruling warlords of the previous civil war.
One would wonder how will the political class deal with the uprising revolution against it. Thanks to the people who have been relentlessly marching, chanting and demonstrating for more than sixty days, we now have a clearer idea of the fake democracy we’ve been living in for the past thirty years and that has started to reveal its true identity. And instead of hearing the people and calling for an early parliamentary election, the politicians have started building walls around their houses and public squares to protect what was previously called the parliament of the people. Those walls are a concrete physical and ideological barriers between the Lebanese people and their politicians in power.
There is no more place in the free world for regimes and dictators that protect themselves from their own people behind cement walls. Those walls cover nothing but the shame and misery of empty buildings and people who were once called leaders sharing empty souls, those who built their empires from our own pockets and are now trembling by the uprising of a population that will do whatever it takes to take back its freedom and honor.
The walls of shame will fall along with the rotten system that ruled our country for the past thirty years and Lebanon shall rise again from the ashes.
We shall not give in, we shall not surrender, we shall succeed!
Long live the revolution.
