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Students Take to
Streets for Geagea and
Father Abou
March 23, 2002
Student demonstrations
jolted Beirut for a third
day within a week Thursday
as hundreds of Lebanese
Forces activists took
to the streets to demand
the release of their jailed
leader Samir Geagea and
call off an 8-year-old
government ban on the
LF.
The protestors set out
from university campuses
in Beirut, Byblos and
Kesrouan in flag-bedecked
bus convoys that converged
on vocational center of
Beirut's middle class
resident neighborhood
of Dikwaneh. They brandished
Geagea's portraits, demanding
his release from prison
at the defense ministry
in Yarze, where he spent
the last eight years in
solitary confinement.
They also demanded a reversal
of the government decree
that outlawed the LF in
1994.
Army troops and riot police
escorted the unlicensed
demonstrations in jeeps
and on foot, avoiding
friction with the protestors
in the same spirit that
prevailed in the previous
demonstrations of Wednesday
and last week.
On Wednesday, hundreds
of St. Joseph University
students paraded the streets
of Beirut in support of
USJ President Father Selim
Abou's dramatic denunciation
of Syria's hegemony, warning
of the accelerating pace
of 'syrianizing' Lebanon.
The USJ protestors also
denounced the prison sentences
given by a Beirut military
court the day before to
Geagea's one-time political
advisor Toufic Hindi and
journalists Habib Younis
and Antoine Bassil.
"We are not an opposition
any longer," said
a statement released by
the USJ demonstrators
as they converged on U.N.
House in downtown Beirut.
"From now onwards
we are all resistance."
The army command, meanwhile,
lashed out at Father Abou
for accusing the Lebanese
army of becoming subservient
to the Syrian army.
"The command is bewildered
that such an inflammatory
agitation against the
army should come from
the rector of so prestigious
an academic institution,"
the military statement
said.
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