Workers clear debris from outside the upscale Le Gray hotel, on Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square, on Sunday, a day after mass protests in the city.
Photo: Sam Tarling For The Wall Street JournalFrance, the U.S. and other countries are mobilizing to help rebuild Lebanon’s capital, a day after thousands of angry protesters took to the streets to demand justice for a deadly explosion they blame on years of poor governance.
French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting a United Nations-backed virtual donor conference on Sunday that will seek pledges from participants, including President Trump, who has said he would attend.
International donors are still assessing the need for aid and how to distribute it—a sign of the challenges involved in allocating assistance to a country whose ruling class has a record of waste and corruption. In an opening statement to the conference, Mr. Macron said access to health care and food and the need for schools and housing were top priorities.
Mr. Macron called on Lebanese political authorities to act to avoid the country’s collapse and answer people’s call for accountability. “The future of Lebanon is at stake,” he said.
More than 700 people were injured in protests Saturday in Beirut, according to first responders. Security forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators, some of whom threw stones while trying to enter the barricaded downtown area. Some security forces also shot live ammunition at unknown targets in the area.
One police officer died during the protests at an incident at a downtown hotel, which Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces are investigating.
On Sunday, an uneasy calm settled over Beirut. Debris and tear-gas canisters littered Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut. Mock gallows, erected for the protests as a symbolic punishment for the country’s leaders, still stood.
French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting a U.N.-backed virtual donor conference to aid Lebanon’s relief efforts on Sunday.
Photo: christophe simon, press poolProtesters are seeking to build on a movement that sprouted last year as a reflection of a frustration among many Lebanese with a political elite they accuse of endemic corruption and nepotism.
Lebanese leaders have sought to deflect blame over the blast by endorsing a probe that has so far homed in on junior officials.
Lebanon’s Information Minister Manal Abdel-Samad announced her resignation on Sunday, saying she did so out of respect for the victims of the explosion and in response to people’s demands for change.
As the protests escalated Saturday, Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab said he would request an early parliamentary election. He said he was willing to stay in his position for two months.
Neither minister took any responsibility for the deadly explosion.
Tuesday’s explosion was the culmination of a series of crises that have nearly collapsed Lebanon. The country’s economy is unraveling, prompting recurrent protests against government mismanagement and deepening poverty. Meanwhile, the coronavirus outbreak is accelerating.
While foreign governments are seeking to rush short-term aid to Lebanon, chronic corruption as well as the role that the militant and political group Hezbollah plays in the government—to which it has been elected—could impede the delivery of assistance.
The International Monetary Fund and the Trump administration have said they won’t support a $5 billion bailout that Lebanon is seeking without major economic overhauls, including efforts to fight corruption.
The U.S. is particularly troubled by the outsize role of Hezbollah, an organization it has designated as a terror group, in the economy and government. Trump administration officials have unsuccessfully pressed the Lebanese government for years to sideline Hezbollah’s political leaders.
Lebanese across the political spectrum have called for international aid, but many disagree on the role foreign countries should play in the country, with some calling on donors to not give any funding through the government due to corruption.
Some protesters on Saturday denounced Hezbollah and called on Iran—which supports the group—to leave Lebanon. Others warned against allowing European powers too much influence, saying the French mandate in the early 20th century, which they likened to colonization, was the root cause of the country’s current woes.
Protesters on Sunday had vacated several government buildings they took over on Saturday evening, including the ministries of foreign affairs, economy and environment. The crowd that entered the foreign ministry was led by a group of retired army veterans who had planned the move before the protest started, according to Youssef Fleeti, one of the former officers that led the action.
The protests added to the scores of injured already being treated in the city’s hospitals after this week’s explosion in the port, which killed more than 150 people. About 5,000 were injured and at least 148 are unaccounted for.
The explosion on Tuesday, which ripped through main commercial and residential neighborhoods, likely occurred when a fire ignited 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the city’s port.
Questions over how the highly combustible ammonium nitrate came to be stored so close to the city center point to years of gross negligence on the part of local authorities, and have fueled the protests.
The Lebanese Red Cross said it had treated or transported 250 people injured in the protests. The Islamic Medical Organization, which also had first responders at the protests, said an additional 490 had been injured.
Human Rights Watch said security forces indiscriminately beat protesters, fired rubber bullets haphazardly and deployed excessive use of tear gas.
Some protesters said the violence by security forces proved the need to keep pushing for change.
“Even now they are injuring people after so many died in the explosion,” said Roy Riachi, a jobless 28-year-old protester in downtown Beirut. “People are fed up.”
—Benoît Morenne in Paris contributed to this article
Write to Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
"plan" - Google News
August 09, 2020 at 08:14PM
https://ift.tt/2PF0xI6
As Beirut Reels From Explosion and Protests, Countries Meet to Plan Aid - The Wall Street Journal
"plan" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2un5VYV
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "As Beirut Reels From Explosion and Protests, Countries Meet to Plan Aid - The Wall Street Journal"
Post a Comment