On Sunday, the Lebanese government was on trial on Beirut’s seaside Corniche. The presiding judge peddled the language of rights and weighed melons on the scales of justice. The jury was a group of citizens and non-citizens, many of the latter born and raised in Lebanon to Lebanese mothers yet unnaturalized because a Lebanese woman cannot pass on her citizenship to her husband and children. A Lebanese woman married to a non-Lebanese, as well as a girl and a young man born to Lebanese women presented their cases in this public court, giving accounts of the legal hardships they face. The Lebanese government sat on the raised platform, unmoved and redundant, puffing on his cigar. We, the jury, got to vote in the end and the verdict was a unanimous and resounding “Guilty!”
You can read more about the protest in the Daily Star and here are some photographs.
June 24, 2010 at 8:09 am
[…] don’t have to deal with the quotidian effects of inequality in areas like inheritance and citizenship. (For more on the citizenship struggle, see here, here and […]
June 14, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Why did you stop writing?