Unlimited
Dhimmitude
By: General Michel Aoun
The silence
of those who claim to represent the Lebanese people over the attacks that took place
yesterday against the students of the Free Patriotic Movement is a telltale of the moral
decay to which these representatives have descended. Their submission to the
abusiveness of the collaborator regime has exceeded the limits of the imaginable.
The repression was not against troublemakers, for there were no riots or disturbances. Rather, it was aimed at the national symbols promoted by the protesters: The Lebanese flag, which has been demoted by the mercenary regime from the status of a symbol to that of a banned item to be confiscated and its bearers arrested by security forces at their checkpoints. In contrast, the Syrian flag has become a laissez-passer for all criminals and suspects, used by its carriers to break the law, deviate from ethical conduct, commit all kinds of crimes, and still have the support and the protection of the authorities.
This was a self-repression carried out by the security forces and the army, since the people were demanding that these forces to be the only symbol of their sovereignty, the only ones in charge of their safety and their land. Instead, these forces savagely descended upon and beat up the protesters as if in an absurd act of sadistic self-flagellation aimed only to please a voyeuristic occupier. This was a repression of the political forces that lament the loss of sovereignty, yet are nowhere to be seen or heard when the going gets tough as if to justify the unjustifiable, mascarading their cowardice as wisdom and their collusion as a smart move. Where are they to take a stance when callers for a return of free decision-making to the national institutions are clubbed and beaten? Are they still underage, in need of a guardian to make up for their immaturity?
It was a repression of liberty imprisoned in the MTV building, when her children went looking for her after everyone had abandoned her fate in the hands of political justice and used the latter as a smokescreen to escape untouched from the battlefield. It was a repression of the press and its syndicates who have bent down very low in order to receive the yoke over their necks. They were slapped right and left, but had little dignity to be revolted and instead kept silent out of respect for the sensitive situation. For if the students were beaten because they attacked the security forces as the silly have claimed, for what reason we ask were members of the press beaten? It just seems that the shame of silence over the crime has crowned the heads of everyone.
The concern is not the beating of citizens and the repression of their freedoms, for those are in the nature of the Baathist police regime imported from Syria which has found shelter in the palaces of political, religious, and intellectual feudalism. The real concern is the silence of everyone over the fall of the symbols that represent the existence of the nation, and their replacement with the symbols of sectarian politics acting to fragment the nation under the big lie of uniting it.
It is time for the Lebanese people to wake up to this ongoing lie and those who perpetrate it. Under the pretense of the rule of law, the gang in power has broken all laws and violated all rights, and has not spared any opportunity to fuel every wind of hatred. But this time, the fire of hatred will engulf those who started it. Let it also be remembered that the brutalizing of the innocent will not go unpunished, and there wont be any Addoum to exonerate the criminals and criminalize the victims.