BEIRUT: A group of 10 activists held a surprise sit-in Tuesday near Parliament to protest the extension its term, prompting dozens of Army soldiers to confiscate their banners and ask them to leave the area.
“This place belongs to the people,” one of the activists, Marwan Maalouf, told the Daily Star by phone from inside the protest. “We have the right to protest here and express our free opinion.”
Protesters held brooms on which they had pasted papers reading “No extension” and “128 thieves,” in reference to the number of MPs.
Press was not allowed into the area by the soldiers, who called reinforcements and surrounded the protesters sitting just a few meters away from Parliament’s door.
Although Maalouf explained that the Army soldiers responsible for guarding Parliament did not physically attack any of the protesters, similar protests had been broken up by force.
On September 24, activists from the civil society organization CHAML (Nonviolent Non-sectarian Youth Citizens) were physically attacked and detained for many hours. A journalist from As-Safir newspaper was also detained and beaten.
Maalouf, along with other civil society activists, are members of “For the Sake of the Republic,” a youth movement created in 2013 that protested the first Parliamentary extension in May of that year.
Although a part of the wider civil society umbrella movement “The Civil Movement for Accountability,” the group held Tuesday’s protest without the knowledge of its partner organizations, which likely contributed to the small turnout.
Lebanese Forces MP Fadi Karam has filed a lawsuit in response to the allegations of "theft" referred to in protester banners, saying he opposed the “generalization” because “not all MPs are thieves.”
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