Downtown Beirut: After the violent clashes, the time has come for the authorities to use a "softer" method.

For the past few days, a certain matter has been troubling the groups of demonstrators who have been sleeping in the tents in the Downtown area for more than three months now. Marcelle Rashed, one of these militants, tells L'Orient-Le Jour that the demonstrators who were tending to the tents were paid a visit on Monday by officers of the Internal Security Forces summoning them to disconnect the wires they have been plugging into an electricity pole that distributes electricity to the tents. This comes only days after a failed attempt at reopening the Downtown area’s main arteries, closed since October 17. "The three places where we are, Martyrs and Riad el-Solh Squares, and the parking lot of Azarieh, have been plunged into darkness for weeks", says Marcelle Rashed. “These spots were abundantly illuminated before the revolution, and now they are in total darkness. And we do need some power to light up our tents.”

The activist, who runs a busy tent in the parking lot of Azarieh, admits that plugging in to the electricity pole is illegal. "However, one must keep in mind that we are not here for fun, but because we are defending a cause, and up until now we still have not achieved our goals yet”, she said. “Why, months later, are they giving us a hard time about a little bit of power flow which probably costs them peanuts, when all we need is enough to light up a lamp or two, and to operate an electrical outlet for our chargers? Aren’t the ones who want to leave us without electricity, the same ones who also wasted billions in this sector [the power sector]? We are not going to allow this to happen."

Marcelle Rashed said that "the officers clearly told the demonstrators to disconnect the electrical wires, at the risk of seeing the municipality agents do it themselves in the coming two days. They would do so under police protection, and would issue tickets to those who would not obey. However, no one has shown us a formal execution order", she said.

And for good reason: the municipality has clearly not taken the decision to disconnect these electrical wires. OLJ asked Beirut mohafez Ziad Shbib about this matter. Shbib, who has executive authority over the city of Beirut, said: “I have made no decision in this direction. No one other than the mohafez can make such arrangements, and I can tell you that this has not happened”, he added. He says that he has no explanation regarding what was said to the protesters. Interior Minister Mohammad Fehmi was unavailable for comment yesterday. Finally, a source from Electricité du Liban (EDL) told the LBC TV channel, that the company does not plan on depriving the demonstrators of electricity, mentioning however that it has received a complaint from a billboard company which has set up some signs in the Downtown area, and which has noticed that their electricity bills have gone up.

A new, subtle strategy?

Is there a subtle attempt at taking over the control of the Downtown area, which has been occupied by protesters since the beginning of the popular uprising on October 17? Just a few days before the parliamentary session –scheduled for next week-, which is expected to examine and discuss the new government's vote of confidence, the question becomes one of crucial importance. Since the beginning of the uprising, each parliamentary meeting has become an opportunity for large-scale demonstrations around the perimeter of the parliament, located in Nejmeh Square (Place de l’Etoile) and the demonstrators have succeeded in preventing the arrival of MPs to a controversial parliamentary session (November 19), and the meeting during which the national budget was adopted (January 27) was also held in a tense atmosphere caused by clashes on the street between demonstrators and security forces.

The authorities, therefore, have reason to fear the continued presence of protesters in the city center. The rather bizarre issue of electrical wiring is not the first indicator of this fact: earlier last week, the police decided to open the roads around Martyrs’ Square, which caused a violent reaction from the demonstrators, who improvised methods to close them once again. Later on, members of the ISF re-installed the iron barriers, blocking access to cars, and the Interior Minister guaranteed that there was no intention to dismantle the demonstrator’s tents. Previously, for weeks on end, violent clashes between demonstrators and police were a daily occurrence in the vicinity of the Parliament.

Has the daily violence given way to a more nuanced strategy aimed at dislodging the protesters? Marcelle Rashed believes that it is the case. "This is a new strategy aimed at repressing us”, she said. “But we are going to counterattack. Many new protesters from different regions will be setting up their tents in the upcoming days."

(This article was originally published in French on the 5th of February)