Charbel, Protestors Exchange Accusations on Violent History Book Rally
Interior Minister Marwan Charbel and the Phalange and National Liberal parties exchanged accusations on Sunday on the side that triggered a clash between student demonstrators and the security forces during a protest against a new history curriculum.
Charbel, who is currently in Tunisia at the head of a delegation representing Lebanon at the meeting of Arab interior ministers, told An Nahar daily that the clash broke out on Saturday when some demonstrators sought to allow a vehicle with a loudspeaker to go beyond the area specified for the protest.
“It seems that two people are behind” the incident, he said.
“When one of the officers tried to interfere to calm the tension, he was beaten,” Charbel told the newspaper, saying “this stirred a counter reaction by some members equipped with sticks and batons.”
So the security forces intervened to end the confrontation between some security personnel and demonstrators, he added.
Charbel also stressed that the dispute on the history book wasn’t worth the clash that left more than 10 people injured, including three policemen.
“I got upset from what happened,” he said, calling for calm to reach the expected results.
The minister told An Nahar that he contacted Phalange MP Sami Gemayel, who on Saturday condemned “the brutality” of the security forces.
Despite Charbel’s claims, the Phalange party laid the blame squarely on the policemen.
A party statement said its student interest branch had organized the peaceful protest with youth from the National Liberal Party. It accused the Internal Security Forces of narrowing the area of the gathering point outside the Grand Serail, by allowing no more than 100 students.
The statement also said that security forces began beating the students after their numbers reached some 1,000.
The head of the National Liberal Party’s student branch Simon Dargham also laid blame on the security forces, telling An Nahar that around 40 percent of demonstrators were left out of the area of the gathering point.
“Suddenly there was an undemocratic behavior (by policemen who) attacked the university youth,” he said. “We tried to calm down (the situation) but they behaved in a barbaric way.”
“We are asking for a historic book for all the Lebanese and not a curriculum that fosters hatred,” Dargham stressed.
He accused some security forces of deliberately hitting the protesters on their faces and noses and not their feet in an “inhumane” way.
The head of the National Liberal Party, Dory Shamoun, also told VDL (100.5) that the security forces that “brutally” attacked student protestors should be held accountable.
The protestors and other Christian parties have rejected the history curriculum, saying it omits key events in the country’s past, including several incidents that took place during the 1975-1990 civil war and the Cedar Revolution of 2005 that drove Syrian forces out of Lebanon after the assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.
Source: Naharnet
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