Commentary by Tamer Mallat – June 13 2011
Copyright Margaux Bergey
On June 15, 2011, Syrian revolutionaries will enter their third month of protest. Thirteen Fridays have already past, over 1,300 Syrians have lost their lives – excluding those listed as missing -, and over 12,000 remain incarcerated in a prison system where torture, humiliation, intimidation, rape and extra-judicial execution constitute the modus operandi of regime violence. In face of looming defeat, Bashar al-Assad appears to have waged an open war against the people of his own country. The army is being deployed everywhere, helicopters are gunning down peaceful protestors; for the regime, the “enemy” appears to be no other than the entire population of Syria. And yet, the Syrians have not succumbed to Bashar’s murderous folly. Friday June 10, hundreds of thousands of protestors braved the plethora of bullets being fired at them to continue to voice their demands: the Syrian regime must go. However, in neighboring Lebanon, the scene is very much different. For a country that has suffered from the Assad dynasty’s tyranny for almost three decades, the Lebanese have been awfully quite. Worse even, the majority of Lebanese can be best described as being completely apathetic, to be as diplomatic as the limits allow. Continue reading
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