Hey Syria…you are next!
by: Eli Atmé
United Australian Lebanese Movement (UALM)
March 2, 2005 - Brisbane, Queensland

Our past makes it our duty to banish and combat all forms of occupation and oppression.
Our past makes it our duty to stand and support all freedom loving people trying to free themselves.
Our past make it our duty to be the voice of those who lost their voices due to an occupation or oppression.
Our past makes it our duty to embrace and protect democracy as a form of coexistence.
Our past makes it our duty to guard and watch over our sovereignty. 

After all, the answer to the question of whether Lebanese citizens feel safe at home is a crucial indicator of the state of our democracy, principally in a country being occupied for 3 decades. The Syrian occupation and its subservient responsible for most of the political assassination in the country and the list is long (Kamal Jumbullat, Bachir Gemayel, Rene Mouawad, Hassan kahaled and Rafik Harrir)

The barbaric crimes commit it by the (Syrian) Baathist regime against our people will always be part of Lebanon history. For Lebanon, it signifies the absolute struggle in the new millennium against oppression and moral abomination by a brutal (Syrian) regime to silence the free voices in the land of cedars. The occupation deprived the people of Lebanon of all things civilized without precedent or parallel.

Therefore, we must not sit idly by; whereas people are been arrested, attacked, injured or assassinated because of their believe or affiliation. We must not turn a blind eye whilst our rights trampled on daily by oppressive regimes. We must not allow any longer our country vandalized and defiled by regimes historically reminiscent of a tyrannical era that freedom addict crush it by ‘velvet revolution’ and the “the Cedars Revolution” it’s just the latest one. And we must not remain silent in the face of pernicious anti-Lebanese propaganda spread by the occupation instrument “the Lebanese will be at each others throat and kill each others, if the Syrian occupation army withdrawn from Lebanon”.

We have to counter the threat of anti-Lebanese propaganda with the utmost determination and the full force of unification, against the voices requesting dialogue between the groups in Lebanon (the opposition and the Government). There are no groups in Lebanon…there is only one voice and one dialogue and that, for the Syrian occupation army and its intelligence apparatus to comply and adhere to the international voices requesting complete and unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon! TODAY.

We as Lebanese we must ask ourselves daily what the late American president (John F. Kennedy) have said before “ask not what my country can do for me, but what I can do for my country”. Moreover, we need to think through of what we have done to free our country and what more can we do, whilst our people in Lebanon struggling under the occupation day in day out.