Lebanon
June 25th, 2020
Against hunger that deepens day by day...
The masses block all the country roads
and take the center of the main cities
Lebanese currency continues to devalue. The value of one dollar today exceeded 8,000 liras in the black market, which is the only one that works, since the official exchange market is not operating. The banks have been emptied of dollars for the payment of the external debt. Lebanon is indebted at 170% of its GDP.
The IMF requires more austerity plans to continue collecting this usurious debt. And the unity government of the Sunni, Maronite and Shiite bourgeoisie is implementing such a plan, with cuts that are leading to interrupt electricity service 8 hours a day in big cities like Beirut and Tripoli, and from 12 to 16 hours in the other Lebanese cities. The health budget was also reduced and several hospitals have already closed permanently. In turn, the tripling of the price of bread (from 1,000 lire to 3,000 lire) has been announced at the beginning of July, while the dollarized prices of food and basic goods are increasingly causing Lebanese workers to lose purchasing power. Thus, the famine deepens day by day.
That is why the Lebanese masses do not leave the streets. At the moment, all Lebanese roads are closed. In these roadblocks they have managed to intercept several flour trucks that were going to Syria to supply al-Assad avoiding the sanctions of the so-called “Cesar Law”. The flour was expropriated at once and distributed among the exploited.
In each protest, a large number of banks are burned down daily, because they are not giving people back their savings or paying their wages in dollars, but instead delivering Lebanese lira banknotes worth less and less. In their actions, the masses also burn the portraits of the president, accurately identifying the banks and the government as their enemies, as they know that in the financial plaza of the Middle East, the rulers and bankers live like kings while the exploited live like beggars.
Tripoli Nour Square and downtown Beirut are the scenery for constant clashes with the repressive forces, the army and the police. A few days ago they even faced Hezbollah guards. The masses do not back down, they know that only through the fall of the regime, that is, the fall of the president, the prime minister and the entire cabinet, the parliament and their spokesperson, and all the parties that share the institutions and the ministries, plus the disarmament of all the repressive forces, including and first of all Hezbollah, and taking over the central bank is how they would be able to conquer bread.
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