Press Release from SOLIDA

SOLIDA, will strive to make year 2000, a year geared to potentiate and fasten all activities designated to solve the case of the arbitrarily detained and kidnapped Lebanese citizens. SOLIDA hopes that the new year will bring positive changes for this dilemma, changes the Lebanese have been eagerly waiting for. Meanwhile the new year kicks in, while the Lebanese people are still living a bitter reality and bearing heavy burdens. Two hundred Lebanese individuals are still arbitrarily detained in Israel under very difficult and inhumane conditions. At the same time hundreds of innocent Lebanese citizens remain held arbitrarily in Syrian jails without legal justifications, suffering torture and deprived of all their rights. In the same context the fate of seventeen thousand Lebanese citizens kidnapped during the war years remains unknown. Still many of those who oppose the authority in Lebanon are detained periodically and treated with cruelty because of their political affiliations, opinion and national stances.
It is sad to start the new year with such atrocities and infringes on human rights. It is also inhumane and traumatic to the detainees, the victims, and their families. How can we forget the traumatic death of Mr. Adel Ajoury,inside a Syrian detention center at the end of 1999, after spending ten years in jail arbitrarily. His death should a reminder to the whole world that the lives of thousands of Lebanese citizens are abused, tortured and mortgage by merciless jailers in Syrian, Israeli and Lebanese notorious detention centers.
How difficult it is for thousands of Lebanese families to celebrate such joyful historical occasions while one or more of their beloved members are absent after they have been kidnapped from their own homes illegally.
Entering the new millennium for SOLIDA personnel and for many others who carry the Human rights' torch, is an opportunity to:
1- Call again and again on the Syrian, Israeli and Lebanese authorities to put an immediate end to their inhumane practices of arbitrary detention and torture. We call of them to release all prisoners held arbitrarily without any legal reason.
2- We call on the International authorities to continue its campaign and efforts designated to protect and guard human rights in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
3- We renew our strong support for the Lebanese detainees, their families and all victims of arbitrary detention and torture in Lebanon. We also renew our solid support for all those who advocate and work for human rights.

SOLIDA plans and hopes to make year 2000, a year designated to strengthen and support all efforts aiming to help release detainees and uncover the fate of the kidnapped.

We call on all those who are willing to help and support our humane campaign to contact our office in France, Paris on:

Phone and Fax # 33/01-43-07-49-68
E-mail (www@club-internet.fr)
SOLIDA, France
29/12/1999