Lebanese bid farewell to assassinated Christian leader
Lebanon began to bid farewell to an assassinated young Christian politician today, and his anti-Syrian allies sought to turn an expected huge turnout at his funeral into a massive show of force against opponents led by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah and their Syrian backers.
About 2,000 people, some carrying flags of Lebanon and other burning pictures of Syria’s president and Lebanon’s pro-Syrian leaders, began convening in downtown Beirut in the morning, hours before Pierre Gemayel’s early afternoon funeral, which was expected to turn into a display of anti-Syrian feelings.
Gemayel, 34, was killed on Tuesday when two cars blocked his vehicle at a crossroads as he left a church and assassins shot him numerous times through a side window.
He was the sixth anti-Syrian figure killed in Lebanon in two years, including former prime minister Rafik Hariri who was killed in a massive bomb blast in Beirut in February 2005.
Billboards of the assassinated industry minister featuring a picture of his shot up car appeared on major streets, and troops lined the roads today in Gemayel’s hometown of Bikfaya in the Christian heartland of north Beirut.
His coffin, wrapped in flags of the Phalange Party and Lebanon, was taken from the family home through Bikfaya’s main street to the entrance of the town. There, at the statue of his grandfather and party founder, the coffin was to be placed in a cortege and driven to Beirut.
The funeral was expected to revive the 2005 mass protests – the so-called “Cedar Revolution” – after Hariri’s assassination which, along with international pressure, drove Syria to withdraw its army from the neighbouring country after nearly three decades of control.
A massive turnout is expected to boost anti-Syrian forces, who are facing heavy pressure from Hezbollah and pro-Syrian groups seeking to unseat the Western-backed government.
But it also raised fears it could be the first round of demonstrations that could bring the political stand-off into the volatile streets.
While some supporters called for revenge against Syria and its allies, Gemayel’s father – a former president – and the Maronite Church quickly called for calm, hoping to avert an explosion of violence in the multi-sectarian nation of 4 million, already struggling with a deepening political crisis.
Before Gemayel’s slaying, Hezbollah had threatened to hold its own mass protests in an attempt to bring down the US-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.
But Hezbollah officials yesterday said the group would take no action in the coming days to allow emotions to cool.
Gemayel’s assassination introduced new tensions into the already dangerous power struggle in Lebanon. Shiites are backed by Syria and Iran. The government and its Sunni Muslim and Christian supporters are backed by the United States and the West.
On Tuesday, US President George Bush accused Syria and Iran of trying to undermine Lebanon’s government, but he stopped short of blaming them for the killing.
Syria condemned the assassination and denied any role in it.
The overwhelmingly Christian Phalange Party’s call for turnout was to bid farewell to Gemayel and to “express the attachment to Lebanon’s freedom, sovereignty, independence and the determination to continue the ’Cedar Revolution’ till the end.”
But Saad Hariri, son of the slain Hariri and main leader of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, has urged his mainly Sunni Muslim supporters to take part in the funeral to also rally out of loyalty for the late Hariri and “to renew the celebration of freedom in Lebanon and defend the international tribunal and justice.”
Still, it was a major Sunni-Christian coming together particularly because the Phalange Party fielded the main Christian militia during the 1975-90 civil war between Muslims and Christians in which 150,000 were killed.
But it also was clear it would further isolate the Shiites, led by Hezbollah and its ally Amal party, who make up the country’s largest single sect.
Tiny Lebanon is one of the most politically complex and volatile countries in the Middle East, with deep divisions among its Christian, Suni and Shiite communities.
Even before the funeral and rally today, the polarisation has become as sharp and exposed as it has been since the end of the civil war.
In a sign of the heightened tensions in Bikfaya yesterday, some two dozen soldiers and an armoured personnel carrier guarded the offices of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a pro-Syrian party whose premises were attacked by a mob of angry Gemayel supporters on Tuesday night.
Saniora asked the United Nations for “technical assistance” in finding the 34-year-old industry minister’s killers, amid widespread accusations that Syria was behind it. Damascus denied the claim.
