Democratic Palestine : 5 (ص 18)
غرض
- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 5 (ص 18)
- المحتوى
-
Gemayel administration has extended
even less effort in accounting for the
slaughter and disappearance of
thousands of West Beirutis.
On July 7, middle-aged and elderly
women, women carrying small children,
began blocking all the crossing points to
East Beirut with barricades of burning
tires, barbed wire and stones. The
women armed themselves with sticks to
prevent all vehicles and pedestrians
from passing. The women expressed
the general outrage felt on the mass
level in all of West Beirut, and when the
official date for opening all the crossing
points and the airport came on July 9,
the whole western sector of the city
joined in solidarity with the Families of
the Disappeared in a general strike.
Besides blocking all the crossing points
for the third straight day with greater
numbers than ever, the women blocked
the main road to the airport as well as all
side roads leading to it. No flights were
able to leave. The Lebanese cabinet
was forced to place the issue of the dis-
appeared on the top of the agenda if the
new security plan was going to be
implemented.
The Committee of the Families of
the Disappeared issued several com-
muniques during the three days of pro-
tests which were published in the prog-
ressive Arabic daily A/ Safir on July 8.*
The Committee stated in part:
Our motto is the return of all disap-
peared and detained immediately and
unconditionally wherever they are.
Because our suffering is continuous, we
welcome the liberation of any of the dis-
appeared. Because of our wounds of
grief and long waiting, we are not going
to stand as an obstacle to liberating the’
disappeared...However, we are not wil-
ling to accept even in the last moment in
our lives, that hundreds of our relatives
be detained in a country whose civiliza-
tion and tradition is known for its free-
dom and democracy. Therefore, we
cannot accept a piece of theater enti-
tled «Let's End the Question of the Mis-
Sing» in which the players and heroes of
this play turn out to be the executioners
of the largest massacre in Lebanese
history. We will not let the curtain go
down on the hundreds and hundreds of
our relatives who are missing and
detained. We will not accept...a political
cover-up. We will only accept a clear
answer for every single one of the dis-
appeared...
Those who are able to open the air-
port, the port and all the crossing points
should be able to liberate all those who
18
have been abducted...There will be no
implementation of any security plan as
long as the question of the abducted
remains and as long as there is any
compromise with the kidnappers...The
families of those abducted declare that
the Phalangist Party and the Lebanese
Forces kidnapped thousands and
demand that the Lebanese authorities
follow up this question with those who
are responsible for the abductions and
in, particular Elias Hobeika and Adib
Anastas.
Elias Hobeika is the chief of the
Phalangist military intelligence. He is
one of those who met with Ariel Sharon
in the night before Phalangist militiamen
entered Sabra-Shatila in cooperation
with the Israeli army. In the wake of the
massacre, the Phalangist Party
appointed Hobeika responsible for
investigating the party’s role in the mas-
sacre. David Ottaway wrote in the
Washington Post on September 30,
1982, that the «most important figures in
the Lebanese Forces command are the
heads of units that witnesses say were
identified as being in or around Shatila
and Sabra at the time of the massacres.
They include Adib Anastas, the head of
the military police, and Joseph Edde, the
commander of the militia’s special black
bereted commandos of all Lebanese
Forces’ units south of Beirut. Anastas
played a prominent role during the civil
war siege by the Lebanese Forces of the
Palestinian refugee camp of Tal Zaatar
where several thousand civilians died in
1976.»
After the general strike in West
Beirut, the Lebanese cabinet was forced
to create a special commission to inves-
tigate the cases of the disappeared. But
the commission was not likely to come
up with any satisfactory results. It is
composed of Lebanese Army officers
and members of the Beirut police - two
groups which participated in the abduc-
tions to begin with. The commission was
given a mandate to report its findings on
July 27 and to coordinate the release of
those still detained. To further sabotage
the work of the commission, the
Phalange has hastily set up its own com-
mittee for the disappeared, demanding
the return of an alleged 1,400 party
members who have vanished since
1975. Anyone missing since 1975 is pre-
sumably now dead. At issue for the
Families of the Disappeared in West
Beirut is the fate of thousands of
Lebanese and Palestinians abducted in
the recent period who may still be alive.
Eyewitness accounts by persons
Demonstration for the return of the disappeared
released within the past six months tes-
tify to the fact that large numbers of the
disappeared from West Beirut are still
being held at the Phalangist headquar-
ters in the Karantina district of East
Beirut and in a basement near a convent
in Adonis, among other Phalangist
detention centers..,
Finally on August 11, the Lebanese
government commission charged with
investigating the disappeared released
its results. The official report was a
whitewash designed to cleanse the
Lebanese government and its security
apparatus of any responsibility for the
disappeared. 761 names were released
Families of the disappeared block the east-west
crossing in Beirut. - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 5
- تاريخ
- سبتمبر ١٩٨٤
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
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