The Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH) is a local non-profit, non-partisan Lebanese human rights organization in Beirut that was established by the Franco-Lebanese Movement SOLIDA (Support for Lebanese Detained Arbitrarily) in 2006. SOLIDA has been active since 1996 in the struggle against arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance and the impunity of those perpetrating gross human violations.

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April 25, 2012

Daily Star - Media watchdog slams rights violations, April 25, 2012


BEIRUT: Media watchdog SKeyes slammed Wednesday the recent detention of two political activists for spray-painting public property.
“The bloggers [Ali Fakhry and Khodor Salameh] were subjected to violations of their legal and [other] rights prior to their release, which followed pressure from protests organized by supporters and civil society activists in front of the Damascus road police station in Sodeco,” according to a Skeyes statement.
Fakhry and Salameh were arrested Friday night after painting phrases in support of the Syrian uprising in the Beshara Khoury area in Beirut. They were released Saturday following a public outcry and a protest held in the Sodeco area.
Fakhry told The Daily Star “we wrote ‘the revolution will continue’ and the Lebanese Army stopped us and sent us to the military police who put us in a dirty cell and gave us just one phone call.”
The two have organized a protest alongside Semaan Khawam, who was charged in February with spray-painting political graffiti on public property, to take place next Tuesday.
SKeyes said members of the Internal Security Forces committed rights violations against members of the media at the protest outside the police station in Sodeco Saturday.
“The protest organized by supporters [of Fakhry and Khodor] and activists saw battering and beating by the Internal Security Forces of activists and journalists which led to the injury of photographers Khaled Ayyad from the Nedaa newspaper and Hussein Baydoun of Al-Nashra website.”
Skeyes warned against such violations and held Lebanese authorities, both political and judicial, responsible for the “receding of general and individual freedoms in Lebanon.”
“Authorities in Lebanon should know that with these oppressive practices they are marching against history and demonstrating that they are still stuck in an obsolete stone-age mentality.”

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/Apr-25/171361-media-watchdog-slams-rights-violations.ashx

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