“United for Lebanon” (UFL) and Green Globe Carry Out a Protest in Front of the Council for Development and Reconstruction

In the presence of a number of media outlets, UFL Alliance and Green Globe Society carried out a protest at 11:00 P.M. on the 5th of July, 2019 before Al-Sarai’s Governmental Entrance leading to the offices of the Council for Development and Reconstruction, in which Lebanese flags and slogans were hoisted calling for a cessation to the deleterious environmental and health risks to the people’s lives, as well as to hold those accountable to their persistence in consummating deals at the expanse people's well-being. At the fore of those held liable for such matters is the Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR), the main perpetrator of government decisions on the file concerning waste management.

The following are the words of the speakers at the event:

President of Green Globe Society, Samir Skaf’s Speech:

The noxious odor of corruption, deals, and political pollution are amidst some of the most odious effluviums the Lebanese people are smelling.

It is in our desire to inform the Government, the Ministry of Environment, the Council for Development and Reconstruction, and the Municipality of Beirut that in matters in which garbage is involved, neither is combustion the proper resolution, nor is the incinerator option sufficient for one.

The garbage landfills will be “full to the brim” before you get the chance to form the incinerator underway, and you will proceed to broaden the landfill of Bourj Hammoud and El-Neemeh, but we will confront you on the ground, we will confront you in the judiciary, we will confront you in the international platforms, and we will confront you with all of our vigor.

How is it plausible to rectify your reputation when 8 colossal landfills are situated on the sea of Lebanon, with the assurance of the 9th one lingering on the horizon, all dumping all sorts of trash to the Mediterranean? Hasn’t the Lebanese nation grown fraught with your ignorance?

How is it plausible to rectify your reputation when there are 22 sewage treatment plants in Lebanon and not a solitary treatment plant of significance is operational?

How is it plausible to rectify your reputation and there are around 4 to 5 sources of sordid miasmas encompassing the Beirut airport, among which are more than 15 farms and 15 slaughterhouses, and all dumping their content to the Mediterranean?

Instead of resolving the issue of the airport stench, you intend to have a garbage fermentation plant on the entrance to the runway? Are you not ashamed of the tourists’ viewpoint? Are you not disconcerted by your family’s visits? Have you no sense of smell; have you no sense of decency? We have, in turn, directed the subject to court. To whoever is concerned with cleansing the Lebanese shores on the Mediterranean and Lebanon’s repute, help us halt the endless solid and water waste dumpings and the implementation of the composting plant near Rafic Hariri International Airport.

How is it plausible to rectify your reputation when you snatch $100 million dollars to let the trash meander leisurely without any treatment . . . and, alas! all of it is going to the landfills! You have inundated the country with garbage and deluged the municipalities with debts . . . No matter what you do, the crisis will find a way to come back, and there’s no method in which you could terminate it with your present approaches.

How is it plausible to rectify your reputation when in lieu of detecting a settlement, you keep proliferating the predicaments by the day.

If you could put an end to the garbage crisis today in Koura, you could also put an end to it in Zgharta, Bsharri, El-Meneyye, and El-Denneyye . . . put an end to the medical waste in the south, put an end to the new waste mountain in Saida, even an end to the range of the mountains of garbage in Tripoli , all by the sea . . .

Our appointment with you are both in the squares and in the courts, and owning to the fact that you will not allow the Lebanese people to live disease free, we will forbid you the diversion as well.

Speech of UFL, Dr. Rami Ollaik:

We are carrying out this vigil today in a disparate manner, as we resume to confront the mafia of corruption, which has grown to become a concurrent force with the political authority; the same mafia which has elicited benefit from the dispersion of the components of the former civil movement to prevail and persist in its indentures, its looting, and its demolition of the lives and health of citizens. We stand today with our bets being scarce, unlike their previous multitudinous nature, but that modicum, sincere, candid, and profound in its movement, completely independent of any political subordination or personal alignment. Today’s assembly is laid down by a righteous and sublime affair that exerts an influence on people's lives, their safety, their social security, and the health of their children in an unmediated manner, especially after having the politicians of duplicity bask in their subjugation and their degradation in order to pass suspicious transactions by silencing any voice demanding the most basic rights and the minimum standard of decent living.

We stand here today as a means of sketching an illustrious image of the Lebanese society, one which reaffirms the credence of the people who are eligible to claim their rights without any narrow calculations or compromises that undermine the continuation of their rightful demand, whoever the perpetrator behind it is.

Today we confront one of the most tremendous corruption scandals in Lebanon: the executive tool for dividing quotas and plundering public money at the expense of people's lives and health, meaning the Council for Development and Reconstruction, being not only the first to deal with solid waste and wastewater treatment, as well as the one who holds utmost liability for the execution of the Lebanese coast and the contamination of the Mediterranean, but also the primary instrument of the executive government, whom we bear responsible for taking the decisions the Council is essentially implementing.

We did not gather here to suffice in protestations and vociferous bellowing. On the contrary, we came after certifying ourselves with the notion that we could have a fair and independent judiciary that would move from securing the masquerade of the corrupt leaders to holding them accountable, rather than merely cropping up small criminals. We have been pleased with the initiatives of an estimate of judges who have committed themselves to extract the judiciary from the incendiary claws of politicians; however, the intimidation and the menace imposed on those judges have dissuaded some from the confrontation, especially in files as controversial and detrimental as that concerning waste. Hence, we came to act as a backbone for all the judges of candor, ones who have decided to be staunch to their oath, and to ascertain that their verdicts in the name of the Lebanese people are not to remain mere ink on parchment.

Our stand today came into view after filing the imperative legal proceedings to determine the responsibilities concerned with the case of the Costa Brava and the Ghadeer River, their all-waste dumping into the Mediterranean and specifically its immense repercussions on the Rafic Hariri International Airport—the sole airport in Lebanon with its touristic interface—where we have rigorously endeavored to morph these cases into public-opinion affairs as a way to engender further compulsions upon those audacious enough to impede the judiciary’s labor.

In the aftermath of becoming cognizant of their being shielded by impunities brought about by a regiment of their own, it was indubitably inexorable of us to advance to the streets in this forewarning march, paving the path towards strides in which the clash becomes efficiently genuine and actual, even if it takes that we be there in “live flesh”, for there is nothing that we can forfeit more than our subsistence and well-being.

We do not stand here today as beggars for our legitimate rights, but to conduct the ultimate deterrent to the Council for Development and Reconstruction, and all those who cultivate exploitation from deals, before we grasp the opportunity to take our the rights into our own hands, after which no remonstrance is to be demonstrated.

The composting plant, which will effectuate virulent and repugnant odors at the airport and its vicinity, a replica of the composting plant in Coral and its putrid stench in the environs of Al-Dawra, Al-Jadida, Burj Hammoud, El-Metn, and Beirut, must stop!

The suits against the landfills along the Lebanese shore are under preparation and monitoring, and we will not be adequate with paper adjudications about them!

Review of international bodies involved in the pollution of the Mediterranean and preparation of legal claims for the intervention are in progress!

In our collection, the results of laboratory examinations with samples from the sea of Beirut are more than appalling, resembling the case of the sea along the Lebanese coast, making Lebanon the dumpster of the Mediterranean, and the worst is yet to come!

And much more . . .

The most paramount matter remains: to fathom the fashion in which we could unite and give the confrontation a luster long gone astray . . . Together we can!

Statement by Ahmed Steitah, Environmental Activist from North Lebanon:

We have come from Tripoli, Akkar, El-Denneyya, Shakka, Zgharta, and Koura to appeal to the Council of Representatives, the Ministers, the Governorates, and the Municipalities, that it is enough, the health of our children and the health of your children is at stake. Enough pollution; enough failure; enough turning a blind eye to the protection of the environment. We have come to combat pollution in food, the air, and water—through land, sea, the atmosphere, the mountains, and even the plains—because the health of our offspring is a red line; thus, we came to Beirut to raise the exclamation alongside the UFL Alliance, and let the courts rule between us and you as a whole.