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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