By
Justin Salhani
BEIRUT:
Six hundred people marched Sunday with the group Lebanese Laique Pride from
Sanayeh to Corniche al-Manara at Ain al-Mreisseh, chanting slogans in support
of secularism and calling for women's rights and media freedom.
Yalda
Younes, co-founder and core team member of Laique Pride, whose tenets are
equality among all Lebanese citizens and the separation of religion and
politics, told The Daily Star that the group chose to march for six specific
demands.
In
addition to enacting a unified Civil Code for the Personal Status Law,
historically a major goal of Lebanese secularists, several of the demands
concerned women's rights.
They
included: passing the Law for Protection of Women from Family Violence
submitted by Kafa to the Lebanese parliament; rejecting the parliamentary
committee's distortions of the draft law and adopting Kafa’s original draft,
which criminalizes marital rape; abolishing article 522 of the penal law, which
drops charges against a rapist if he marries his victim; amending the
nationality law so as to give Lebanese women the right to grant their
nationality to their children and spouses.
Laique
Pride also issued two demands in support of media freedom. The organization
called for passing the draft law Prohibiting the Pre-Censorship of Cinema and
Theatre launched by Maharat Foundation and Marsad Al-Raqaba, and withdrawing
the draft law for the Lebanese Internet Regulation Act (LIRA) proposed by the
Lebanese Ministry of Information.
Among
the marchers were the Lebanese “secular clowns,” a West African percussion
group and secular clubs from universities throughout Lebanon. For the first
time, secular clubs from Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) and l'Académie Libanaise
des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) were in attendance, while American University of Beirut
(AUB)’s secular club, long a mainstay of such rallies, also participated.
Before
the march began, the clowns passed out yellow roses to Lebanese security
personnel, who greeted them with smiles.
The
march concluded at Ain al-Mreisseh with a nod to London’s Hyde Park, famed for
its Speakers' Corner. Upon finishing the march, each person had the option of
climbing a small ladder, speaking into a megaphone and answering the question,
“How would you change Lebanon?”
Despite
the fact that the march attracted a much smaller crowd than rallies for
traditional political parties, Younes maintained that the secular movement is
gaining ground. She cited the participation of ALBA and USJ’s secular groups,
as well as volunteers in Baalbek distributing over 3,000 flyers in their
region, both unprecedented phenomena, as heralding a greater push for concerted
action among Lebanese secularists.
“Minorities have always
changed the world, not majorities,” she said.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/May-07/172558-laique-pride-marches-for-secularism-womens-rights.ashx
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