By Van Meguerditchian
Daily Star staff
Monday, March 28, 2011
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AMSHEET, JBEIL: Hundreds of demonstrators marched from the town of Amsheet to Jbeil’s square Sunday, demanding an end to the sectarian political system in Lebanon as the nascent pro-secular movement staged a show of force for the fourth time.
Following a massive rally in Beirut last week, where protesters marched from Achrafieh’s Sassine Square to the Interior Ministry in Sanayeh, a relatively smaller crowd poured into the coastal town of Amsheet from different cities in Lebanon.
“We want a nation, not a farm,” read some of the banners raised by demonstrators to a backdrop of chants against the sectarian system.
“Everyone standing on the balconies … come down and join us to bring down this corrupt system,” men, women and children chanted as they marched toward Jbeil.
Not wanting to focus solely on the capital, the organizers of the “Topple the Sectarian System” group – which originated on Facebook – called for the need to stage protests across Lebanon.
“We want to break the common trend of affiliating each town with its residents and sects,” said Junaid Sarieddine, 29, an activist and playwright. “Demonstrations will be staged everywhere regardless of our numbers,” he added as he marched with other activists in Amsheet, the hometown of President Michel Sleiman.
Amsheet, known for its majority Christian population, became the fourth town to host an anti-sectarianism protest since the first was held in Beirut’s southern suburb of Shiyyah last month.
For Sarieddine it was a case of quality, not quantity at Sunday’s march. Huge crowds were not important, he said, what matters is the movement’s goals. “What we are demanding is a real reconciliation between the Lebanese [by] ending this sectarian system in the country,” he added.
While the protests in Beirut have been gathering momentum, the movement has been struggling to gain support across the country.
Sunday’s banners therefore aimed at highlighting the widespread socioeconomic suffering of all Lebanese.
“We want our $60 billion,” read some banners, in reference to the huge public debt accumulated by Lebanon over the past 20 years.
Ahmad Jezzini, a media spokesperson for the movement, told The Daily Star that there should be no conflict between anti-sectarian slogans and secularist slogans in the country.
“The country should become a secular state,” said Jezzini, who had come from south Lebanon’s Iqlim al-Tuffah region to join the rally.
Jezzini said that although Amsheet’s Municipality was not “very cooperative, activists decided to go on with their plans. “We had to hold this demonstration to prove to people that we are not only in Beirut, but that we have popularity throughout Lebanon,” 48-year-old Jezzini added.
But not everyone was glad to see a rally against the confessional system, in place for 68 years; many in the Amsheet-Jbeil neighborhood expressed their opposition to the movement, describing it as “suspicious.”
An Amsheet resident and businessman told The Daily Star that he did not see anyone from his town among the crowd marching toward Jbeil. “There is no one from Amsheet or Jbeil in this crowd,” Pierre Mattar said.
“We don’t know who these people are, most of them are strangers and we are really skeptical of their aims,” said Mattar. “Lebanon doesn’t need a revolution of this sort, this country has more than 18 sects in it and their representatives get elected democratically,” Mattar added.
Since its establishment, Lebanon has been governed under a Constitution that allocates power to different religious communities, in an effort to maintain a delicate balance between its various sects, a unique formula in the wider Middle East region.
However, demonstrators insisted that the very cause of corruption and economic woes is the sectarian system itself.
“Once the sectarian system is toppled, an employer would no longer ask for your identity based on your sect,” said Sanaa al-Jaami, driving at the rear of the crowd.
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