Democratic Left remembers Samir Kassir on Feb. 14

BEIRUT - Samir Sarout

WASHINGTON - Scott Lurie

March/April 2006

The Democratic Left Movement (DLM) had additional reasons to participate in the Feb. 14 first annual commemoration of the Rafik Hariri assassination, according to DLM members.

“As DLM members, we don’t only remember the killing of Hariri, but we also remember the consequent Independence Intifada whose architect was our dear comrade and one of our movement’s founder Samir Kassir,” a DLM member told Alternative.

For this purpose, the DLM devised their special style in participating in the Feb. 14 one million people demonstration. They gathered at the site of Samir’s assassination and marched from there to Martyrs Square.

“We certainly want to know the truth behind the assassination of Hariri, but we also want to know who killed Samir, George Hawi and Gebran Tueni,” the member who preferred to remain anonymous added.

At 10:00 am, some 1,000 members and supporters of the DLM gathered at the Samir assassination site in front of his house in Ashrafieh. Carrying pictures OF Samir, Hawi and Hariri, Lebanese flags as well as flags of the DLM, the demonstration that was headed by DLM Vice President Ziad Majed and Kassir’s widow Gizelle Khoury marched to join the rest of the Feb. 14 masses.

“We might not be as massive as other political parties, but we are as committed for the knowing the truth of who stands behind the 2005 assassinations, and the completion of the nation’s independence as everybody else,” the member argued.

“If you take the ratio of our martyrs in the Independence 2005 Intifada to the number of the DLM numbers, you’d find that we were the party that sustained the biggest harm.”

Still, the member added, “we’re in this, equally, all of us and we’re not giving up on each other. The battle for Lebanon’s independence has started in 2005 and we will never give up until it ends, lest we want Samir and George’s martyrdom to go in vein.”

In Washington the March 14 forces composed of the Progressive Socialist Party, the Democratic Left Movement, the Future Youth Organization, the Phalange Party and the National Liberal Party held a demonstration in front of the Lebanese Embassy here on Feb. 14 to commemorate the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri.

Despite the grief over the Hariri loss, the demonstrators could not but show some thrill at the news of the one million rally held earlier that day in Beirut. The Washington demonstration observed a minute of silence in honor of Hariri and the rest of the Syrian-regime victims in 2005 that include Samir Kassir, George Hawi and Gebran Tueni.

The demonstrators issues a statement in which they called for the resignation of Lebanese president Emile Lahoud, the disarming of Hizbullah, and the deployment of the army to the south of the country.

The rally that witnessed the gathering of tens of Lebanese expatriates roughly reflecting the Lebanese political alignment with the noted absence of the Free Patriotic Movement that has, since Feb, 14  2005, turned coat and jumped to the other political pro-Syrian alignment in the country.

Protestors also held a vigil candle pictures of Hariri and Kassir. The protest was concluded with the national anthem.