BEIRUT: Roughly one hundred protesters gathered in front of Al-Akhbar's headquarters Monday in a display of public anger against Saudi Arabia which aims to sue the Lebanese daily.
Activists, media figures and civilians demonstrated outside Al-Akhbar’s offices in Beirut three days after the Kingdom’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Awad Asiri, accused the Lebanese newspaper of spreading lies and rumors about Saudi Arabia in a published report.
“The time has come to put an end to this,” the envoy was quoted as saying in the Kingdom’s Al-Watan newspaper Friday.
The Saudi Arabian daily also announced that Riyadh’s embassy in Beirut will task a legal team with filing a lawsuit against Al-Akhbar, describing the newspaper as “belonging to the Iran-Hezbollah-Syria axis.”
Protesters Monday shouted slogans and raised banners denouncing what they deemed to be a blatant violation of freedom of press.
“The protests show that there are journalists who are ready to support other news outlets despite differences in political views,” an Al-Akhbar employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Daily Star. “They are just here to support freedom of press.”
Political analyst and staunch March 8 supporter, Faysal Abdel Sater, delivered a heavy-handed criticism of Saudi Arabia in a televised statement issued from the protest site.
“Those who wage an aggression on the Yemeni people have no right to give us lessons on democracy,” he said in reference to the Saudi-led airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen launched last month.
Abdel Sater considered the Saudi Ambassador’s remarks as a blatant violation of freedom of press and interference in the affairs of a Lebanese publication.
He also said that the Kingdom was attempting to exert control over Lebanese media outlets in the same way it censors media in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Akhbar has been one of the most prominent voices against the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen launched last week.
The envoys criticism sparked a backlash from Hezbollah that vocally expressed its solidarity with Al-Akhbar.
On Sunday, Hezbollah accused Saudi Arabia of running a "media slave market" and attempting to threaten freedom of press in Lebanon.
Saudi Arabia, which dominates Arab media outlets, is attempting to threaten and insult “the Lebanese free voice,” Hezbollah MP Nawaf al-Moussawi said Sunday.
He distinguished Al-Akhbar, which he described as an “honorable free media outlet,” from other media outlets that “scavenge” for funds from the Saudi Arabian treasury.
“Al-Akhbar is a voice that represents free people and not a...media slave market purchased with oil money,” he added.
In a statement issued by the party's media office Saturday, spokesperson Mohammad Afif accused Asiri of endangering the lives of the newspaper staff.
"[Asiri's remarks] represent a blatant and direct threat to the newspaper and the life and safety of its employees, a direct assault on the dignity and freedom of the press in Lebanon, as well as a gross interference ... in Lebanese internal affairs," Afif said.
The only sin Al-Akhbar has committed, Afif went on, was to "expose ... Saudi aggression against brotherly Yemen and reveal scenes from Saudi policy that continually create discord and unrest in the Arab and Islamic world."
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