Mourning in Beirut

posters_burning1.jpg
Pro­tes­tors and mourn­ers burn and spit on posters of Syr­ian pres­i­dent Bashir Assad and Lebanese pres­i­dent Emile Lahoud, Assad’s ally in Lebanon.
BEIRUT – They came by the thou­sands, by the hun­dreds of thou­sands, to cen­tral Beirut, just as they had done 20 months ago, to mark the killing of another politi­cian opposed to Syria’s yoke on Lebanon.
Today it was for Pierre Gemayel, the young Chris­t­ian min­is­ter of indus­try in Lebanon’s besieged anti-Syrian gov­ern­ment. On Tues­day, three gun­men ambushed him and sprayed his car with bul­lets mid-afternoon in a Chris­t­ian neigh­bor­hood, killing him and fur­ther plung­ing the coun­try into polit­i­cal cri­sis.
But in Martyr’s Square in down­town Beirut, today was a day of defi­ance for the mostly young, mostly Chris­t­ian masses who came down to stand up to Syria, they say.
“We come for the sake of Lebanon,” said Khaidon Issa, 55, from the Chris­t­ian neigh­bor­hood of Achri­fiye in east Beirut. “Mar­tyr after mar­tyr, where is this going to end?”
Gemayel is the fifth assas­si­na­tion of an anti-Syrian fig­ure in Lebanon since for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Rafik Hariri was killed Feb. 14, 2005 in a mas­sive car bomb near down­town Beirut that also killed 22 oth­ers. The protests that fol­lowed on March 14 were mas­sive — by some accounts, one-fourth of Lebanon came to Beirut that day — and prompted the with­drawal of Syr­ian troops from Lebanon after a 29-year occu­pa­tion. Since then, there have been 15 car bombs and other vio­lence, most of which has been blamed on Dam­as­cus in its attempt to desta­bi­lize Lebanon and regain con­trol over its smaller neigh­bor.
“I think March 14 was a his­toric day for the world,” said Naim Boushahine, 21, a hair­dresser from Ham­mana and a sup­porter of the Druze party, the Pro­gres­sive Social­ist Party. “Because of that day, God will­ing, Lebanon will achieve its full inde­pen­dence.”
While hun­dreds of sol­diers and riot police sur­rounded the square, peo­ple pounded drums, waved thou­sands of Lebanese flags — along­side those of their respec­tive polit­i­cal par­ties — and giant loud­speak­ers played for­mer speeches of Gemayel, who once said he was pre­pared to die for Lebanon’s free­dom.
His voice boomed forth: “There are peo­ple who are plan­ning every moment to over­throw the gov­ern­ment.” It was a poignant state­ment; many believe Gemayel was killed to reduce the anti-Syrian cab­i­net to fewer than 16 mem­bers. If that hap­pens, and there are only two min­is­ters stand­ing against that fate, the gov­ern­ment will fall.
But among the crowd, rather than let­ting Syria and its Lebanese allies — Hezbol­lah, Michel Aoun and Pres­i­dent Emile Lahoud — top­ple the elected gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Sin­iora, some were plan­ning their own rev­o­lu­tion.
“Tomor­row, God will­ing, we’re going to Baabda,” said Boushahine, refer­ring to the pres­i­den­tial palace and home to the staunchly pro-Syrian Lahoud. “We’re going to lib­er­ate the palace from the cock­roach that lives there.”
Oth­ers were less direct, but in agree­ment.
“We hope that Lahoud resigns today,” said Tariq Naj­jar, 22, from a town called Abadieh. “We hope that today that Lahoud hears our voices and (Hezbol­lah, Iran and Syria) know that we are the major­ity of Lebanese peo­ple.”
As the square began to fill up, the red and white Lebanese flags con­trasted sharply with the deep, azure blue of the sky. Young men and women held up signs of Bashar Assad, the pres­i­dent of Syria, embla­zoned with the words, “Shove Your Civil War,” a rejec­tion of the assumed plot by Dam­as­cus to foment civil war in Lebanon in order to take con­trol of it again. Some burned posters of Lahoud and Assad.
At 1 p.m., Gemayel’s body was brought to the Maronite St. George Cathe­dral in down­town Beirut, while thou­sands of Lebanese stood out­side. Osman Hamze, 20, a stu­dent of com­puter sci­ence in the heav­ily Sunni town of Tripoli, said he had come down to stand for “the truth” about all the killings done in Lebanon since that fiery Feb­ru­ary day, 20 months ago.
And after that?
“Tomor­row is a nor­mal day,” he said. “But we won’t for­get our killers.”

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