Men dressed in black and loyal to Hezbollah and another Shia movement, Amal, attacked a peaceful protest site in downtown Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square this week, setting fire to tents and beating protesters in Lebanon.
Security forces dispersed the attackers with rubber bullets and smoke grenades.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said last week that the anti-government protests were funded by foreign powers, claiming that “someone is trying to pull the country towards civil war”.
Despite threats from Hezbollah, Lebanese demonstrators have continued to protest, defying gangs of Hezbollah militants who tried to suppress the movement.
Protests in Lebanon erupted when the government announced a tax of $6 a month on Internet voice-call services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Months before the protests, Lebanon was already suffering an economic crisis, with its debt-to-GDP ratio the third highest in the world.
Saad Hariri resigned as Prime Minister of Lebanon on Tuesday, saying that he had reached a “dead end” trying to deal with protesters’ demands to deal with corruption and the stagnant economy.
Hariri said: “For 13 days the Lebanese people have waited for a decision for a political solution that stops the deterioration [of the economy]. And I have tried, during this period, to find a way out, through which to listen to the voice of the people. It is time for us to have a big shock to face the crisis. To all partners in political life, our responsibility today is how we protect Lebanon and revive its economy”.
President Michel Aoun said Thursday that he wants a new government of technocrats, as the protesters had demanded.
Commentators say that the diverse backgrounds of the protesters — including Christians, Sunnis, Shia and Druze — challenges the classical Lebanese political framework based on the divisions between the country’s religious and ethnic groups.
