“The Lebanese population was pronounced dead for 30 years. It now has a pulse,” 24-year-old protestor Alisar Serhan says. “We are all connected; every class, religion, sex, and age. Never in 30 years has this happened, it’s a phenomenon!” Since mid-October, Lebanon saw a series of rare country-wide protests in response to increasing austerity measures, corruption and an economic crisis that has been looming for the past year. For the first time, the world is seeing the Lebanese people mobilized not along sectarian lines, which took hold of the country’s identity for more than three decades, but under a united goal to remove an ineffective government. Incompetence, corruption, and disregard for the people’s needs for the past few months left the population in despair and deprivation, with demonstrations being their only last recourse . “This is a revolution, not an organized protest. For 30 years and 30 years before that we’ve been told you are sects and regions and enemies. We are not, we are one country under one flag with one constitution,” a source at Lebanese Voices tells Egyptian Streets. “The Lebanese have discarded their differences and united to…
Inside Lebanon’s Protests: How People Are Uniting Beyond Sectarianism
October 29, 2019
