The cry of the Lebanese who take to streets against the political crisis
More and more people are demonstrating under the motto: "We have nothing more to lose, because we have already lost everything". The protests involve several cities nationwide, with blocked roads and burning tires. The Lebanese pound collapses, the black market exchange rate is at 10 thousand per US dollar.
Beirut (AsiaNews / Agencies) - "We have nothing more to lose, because we have already lost everything," is the slogan chanted several times yesterday by an increasingly angry crowd, which poured into the streets and squares of various Lebanese cities to demonstrate against the continuous collapse of the local currency and a political crisis that threatens to destroy the model on which nation is founded.
On the black market, one dollar was trading at a record 10 thousand Lebanese pounds, an unprecedented - negative - record.
From Tire to Akkar, from Nabatiyé to Saïda, from the capital to Békaa, Jbeil, Tripoli and Batroun, comes the same desperate cry against a political and ruling class increasingly considered the origin and cause of the crisis that has hovered over the land of cedars for over a year and a half. In Beirut too, demonstrators blocked roads, set fire to tires and bins, shouting: "The people want the regime to fall".
"We have not had electricity for two weeks, the dollar is trading at 10 thousand lire, there is no work for the Lebanese", a protester told L'Orient-Le Jour (OLJ) who does not mean his name, but says he is coming from Khandak el-Ghamik, a fiefdom of the Amal movement. "We are against everyone", he says, taking up the slogan of the demonstrations of 17 October 2019, and then specifying that the President of the Parliament Nabih Berry and the head of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah are "exceptions".
“We block the streets, because we have no electricity, we have no money, we have no security,” shouts 18-year-old Omar, from the Aïcha Bakkar neighborhood. He continues, "here all the demonstrators are Shiites and I am Sunni, but we are in solidarity". He says he wants to fight "the whole political class, with the exception of Sheikh Saad" (Hariri, the prime minister in charge).
A similar scenario also emerges at the intersection known as Chevrolet, in the Furn el-Chebback district. "We have no more money" shouts the 20-year-old Antoine, a student at Saint Joseph University, "our parents can no longer pay our university fees", while in the background the police watch - without intervening – at the passing street demonstrations and the air becomes more and more unbreathable due to the burning tires.
"I can no longer pay my university fees," says 21-year-old Elias disconsolately. The young man is convinced that the popular revolt is not over, on the contrary, it is only the beginning of a much longer path. Fouad, 43, unemployed for a year, is calling on the Lebanese to unite and "take steps to get rid of a political class that continues to ignore us".
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01/06/2021 12:44
