via #YouStink FB Page

More than 30 civil society activists and protesters were arrested last Thursday following the violent protests, out of which 11 were questioned by The Military Tribunal yesterday for several charges including: assaulting police, vandalizing public and private property and rioting. Six of them were freed yesterday while five remain in prison (Waref Suleiman, Pierre Hashash, Hussein Ibrahim, Fayez Yassine and Rami Mahfouz).

Even if some of these charges are valid (under the Lebanese law) and some of these protesters did get violent and damaged public properties, I don’t think it’s just or fair to arrest any of them without holding other parties accountable. People have been protesting for 4 months now and police (and army at some point) violence has been documented almost every time yet no measures were taken against any of the security officers. Moreover, why weren’t any of the infiltrators arrested? Why weren’t certain riot police members who beat up innocent civilians and journalists held accountable? What about those who beat up the activists that were on an open hunger strike? What about the reckless arrests and interrogations in prison? Where’s the investigation that we were promised? What about armed thugs and terrorists still roaming our streets freely?

The duty of the ISF is “to protect democracy, the government premises and public properties” and more importantly protect the people. These protesters should not pay the price simply because they don’t have a proper political cover and should be freed the soonest.

Meanwhile, garbage is still piling up all over Lebanon.