Prisoners Welcoming the Release of Prisoners!!!
By: Elias Bejjani
2/2/04

It is not a secret that the Lebanese puppet regime's appointed officials, as well as the other made-in-Syria "Taef Accord" politicians have reached an unprecedented stage of corruption, shameful subordination and kneeling, devious skillfulness in the art of cheating, swindling, hypocrisy, cheap beggary, and ethical decay. They have reached a hopeless cancerous condition that cannot be treated except with radical eradication. It is an anomalous status that Lebanon has never before encountered in its contemporary or in its remote history.

With this prostration of dhimmitude and "Taqiya" (the practice of hiding one's true beliefs to submit to a hostile environment), the "Taef" officials, politicians, Mafiosi and warlords played a farcical theatrical charade in welcoming the prisoners released by Israel in a mutual swap with Hizbollah. They hid under the cloak of delusional resistance and stood in line like children to welcome the freed prisoners, forgetting that they themselves are the actual prisoners. Prisoners of humiliation, subordination, vassalage and prostration to the Syrian occupying power.

Therefore those officials who willingly accept imprisonment for themselves and for their people do not have any right to preach freedom and defile its torch, for they cannot offer that which they do not have.

By the same token those who have sold their country and themselves for thirty silvers are not entitled to speak on behalf of their victims, the people, and hide behind the very questionable cause of resistance!! And those who happily and willingly practice subordination and kneeling are not eligible to hold any leadership or official position.

Because Almighty God has created man on his image, and because man should remain so, we genuinely congratulate those who were freed, no matter their political or religious affiliation. In fact, securing the freedom of anyone who was illegally and arbitrarily detained is a noble humanitarian achievement that should be hailed by each and every person that honors the charter of human rights and respects equality and tolerance.

Meanwhile, the Syrian-appointed officials and all the mercenary "Taef" herd who hailed the release of the prisoners and beat the drums of victory are in fact themselves prisoners. All these hypocrites and Pharisees are chained in their palaces with shackles of slavery and betrayal. Accordingly, they are the ones who need to be freed and who badly need prayers for the purification of their souls.

If these Syrian-made drum beaters and trumpet blowers have any trace of conscience or self-respect, they should have asked their Syrian Baathist masters to immediately and unconditionally release the hundreds of Lebanese who are arbitrarily detained against their will for many years in Syria's notorious jails and who are deprived of their basic rights.

If they had done so, the celebration would have been a national obligation and the joy would have included all nineteen Lebanese communities, and not only one as was the case. The Lebanese would have felt for at least once since 1990 that the so-called rulers are actually of a human nature endowed by Almighty God with conscience and discretion, and not devouring vultures!!!.

But unfortunately, no act of this kind took place, and the celebration turned to be unilateral, biased and selective, exactly as the current state of the "Syrianized and politicized judiciary" that has been used since 1990 as a tool by the Syrian occupier and its local puppets to subdue, tame, muffle and intimidate patriots who call for freedom, independence, sovereignty, the withdrawal of the Syrian occupying forces and the implementation of the UN Resolution 520.

It is a shame that those who allege liberation do not have a free will and their acts and decision-making process are fully controlled by foreign powers. Is it a disgrace that those same braggers are keeping a blind eye on their countrymen arbitrarily detained in Syrian jails.

It is actually belittling for those who show off with the fluency of their so-called nationalist rhetoric with slogans of Arabism, liberation, and resistance, while in fact they are mere parrots with wooden tongues, and their names listed among the 262 leaders and dignitaries who received oil bribery vouchers from Saddam Hussein's toppled regime.

It is disparaging for those who claim wisdom and foresight to have a tunnel vision and a narrow minded mentality.

It is derogatory for those who are devoted to faith and religious causes to deceive themselves and others and to act like chameleons longing for financial status and illegal sectarian gains.

Is is a foul disgrace for all Lebanon's puppet officials and the band of mercenary made-in-Syria politicians to celebrate the freedom of any released prisoner as long as hundreds of their own people remain forgotten and detained in the Syrian Baathist jails. The joy of liberation ought to be genuine, heartily felt, fair and comprehensive. Yet, families of the Lebanese detained arbitrarily in Syria have been wishing that their loved ones were held in Israeli and not in Syrian jails.  At least Israel, as has been proven, would have made their whereabouts known and public, secured their basic human rights, had a kind of trial and allowed the Red Cross to check on them and ensured them visitation rights.

After the latest Israeli-Hizbollah prisoners' swap, and the kind of folkloric charade that accompanied it, there is no logical, legal, humane or political bases left for Syria's Baathist officials to continue their sickening silence as to the fate of hundreds of innocent Lebanese prisoners of conscience held in their degrading Stalinist detention centers deprived of all their human rights and evilly ripped of their humanity.

There is no justice whatsoever in keeping the fate of the missing, kidnapped and arbitrarily detained Lebanese without an immediate and just humane end. The Syrian Baathist regime and its Lebanese proxies were and still are completely legally responsible for all the horrible atrocities inflicted on these victims while the free world is silently and indifferently watching without assuming its moral and human obligations instead of holding Syria accountable.

The UN, the US, the Arab League, Canada, Europe, the Arab countries, the Vatican, Bkerki, and all Human Rights Organizations have an obligation to pressure both Syria and its clone regime in Beirut to put an end to the Lebanese detainees' crucifixion that has been going on for the last 27 years.

As far as the criminal role that the Syrian-installed regime in Beirut and its figures has been playing in this human misery, they all should rest assured that the Day of Judgment is in the horizon. Those Trojans did not only keep a blind eye on the crime and abandon their victims, but in fact have handed over most of the detainees to the Syrian butchers, and then denied their whereabouts and accused their families of being mentally sick and experiencing visual hallucinations.

It is said that Almighty God, although forgiving and patient, never ever abandons or forgets the innocent.

Elias Bejjani
*Human Rights activist, journalist & political commentator.
*Spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF)
*Media Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC)
E.Mail phoenicia@hotmail.com