|
FPM, LF say
recent arrests were political
By Nayla Assaf
Daily Star staff
Several supporters of the disbanded Lebanese Forces (LF) and the Free
Patriotic Movement (FPM) were rounded up over the weekend in what has been
denounced as an attempt to deter opposition forces from engaging in
electoral activities.
At least seven people most of them students were arrested for
questioning over the past 72 hours, mostly in the southern district of
Jezzine and in Baabda-Aley. Although none were kept in detention, the move
was denounced as “illegal political maneuvering.”
“The FPM began organizing in Jezzine very recently, and so this is a way
to discourage our supporters and would-be supporters from engaging in any
kind of political activity,” said Elias Zoghbi, the pro-sovereignty
faction’s media spokesman. He pointed out that municipal elections are
coming up in May.
Zoghbi said the arrests had been conducted by plainclothes officers, whom
he said were members of the Jezzine security bureau.
After the mass arrests of over 100 FPM and LF students in August 2001,
which were denounced by civil society at large as repressive and as an
unprecedented blow to public freedoms, no major incidents of the sort have
been recorded. However, officials from both movements maintain that
arrests and threats are conducted on regular basis.
“Although recently no beatings and manhandling have been reported, the
mere fact of rounding up young activists, making them wait for hours and
threatening to throw them in prison is enough to exercise pressure on both
students and their parents,” Zoghbi said. He said that every time
supporters meet, they are taken in for questioning the next day. “It’s
sort of a routine,” he added.
Jbeil MP Fares Soueid also denounced the arrests over the weekend. “The
authorities’ repressive methods on opposition activists will not stop us
from going on with the preparations for the municipal elections which will
restore Lebanon’s free decision-making powers starting with local (municipal)
authorities,” he said.
Soueid, who is a member of the Christian opposition Qornet Shehwan
Gathering, singled out the arrest of LF students in Baabda.
He said that if the arrests continue within the coming week, he will be
taking further measures. “If this goes on, I will meet with the major
opposition figures in the country to see how we can prevent those
repressive methods,” he said.
The LF, a faction of the right-wing Christian Phalange party created by
slain President Bashir Gemayel, was disbanded and outlawed after its
leader, Samir Geagea, was imprisoned in 1994. At the time, Geagea was
accused of bombing a church in Zouk, following which the amnesty law on
crimes committed during the 1975-90 civil war was lifted for him.
The FPM is not outlawed, but it fell out of favor after its leader, former
Army Commander General Michel Aoun, was ousted from the presidential
palace in 1990, marking the end of the civil war.
|
