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Beirut – agencies:
Thousands of people demonstrated in downtown Beirut yesterday to demand a new independent government to lift Lebanon out of its deepening crisis amid growing frustration with the country’s financial collapse.
The economic crisis in Lebanon is the greatest threat to its stability since the 1975-1990 civil war. Since the outbreak of the crisis in late 2019, it has cut jobs, deprived people of their bank deposits, devalued the currency by 85 percent, and increased the risk of widespread hunger. A group of protesters said in a statement: “Given the flagrant failure of the authority at the level of social and economic challenge, we return to the streets with the aim of imposing the formation of a government independent of the parties of the system now, and with in order to build an alternative to the current system. ” Lebanon’s problems have worsened after the bomb attack in Beirut port last August, which destroyed large swaths of the capital, killed 200 people, pushed the government to resign and left the country without a captain at a time of deepening the financial collapse. In addition, yesterday afternoon a plenary session of Parliament was held at the UNESCO Palace in Beirut to study and approve bills and proposals on the agenda, and simultaneously several protesters held sit-ins in the vicinity of the palace in means of tight security measures. The army units took exceptional security measures in the immediate vicinity of the session site at the UNESCO Palace and the main and secondary roads leading to it. The security forces also took exceptional traffic measures from the morning until the end of the session. The families of Lebanese students abroad held a sit-in near the UNESCO Palace to demand the implementation of the student law and allow families to send money to their children abroad. This law had been approved in parliament previously, but was not implemented. The families of the prisoners held a sit-in to demand the approval of a general amnesty for their children, in light of the overcrowding in Lebanese prisons. Hired teachers of basic education also organized a sit-in near the UNESCO Palace in Beirut, prior to the parliamentary session to demand an urgent and reiterated law that requires the calculation of their contracts between them and the Ministry of Education that stipulates schedules. specific jobs during the school year.
