05 January 2009

Year in Review

BEIRUT: 2008 could have marked a year of change for human-rights campaigners in Lebanon, but their efforts were marred by political turbulence and reluctance from the government to address even the most glaring abuses. Lebanon remains a country in which, among other issues, women face routine discrimination, the abuse of migrant workers goes unpunished and politically motivated killings unsolved, refugees are disenfranchized, torture is still practiced, and the whereabouts of individuals missing since the 1975-90 Civil War have yet to be confirmed.

After six months of political vacuum, Lebanon's political troubles took a turn for the worst on May 7, when Hizbullah and its allies briefly took control of parts of Beirut. In the bloody fighting, at least 81 people, including many civilians, lost their lives.

To date, however, no investigations into the deaths have been launched and no perpetrators of the violence prosecuted, with the exception of a shop owner who shot dead two people at a funeral procession on May 10. Nor have victims from Tripoli, North Lebanon, and other areas of the country, seen anyone be held accountable for deadly fighting that has erupted intermittently since May. Despite repeated calls by a number of civil society institutions for those involved to be prosecuted, the dead have been forgotten in the ensuing tepid reconciliation efforts of Lebanon's rival politicians.

The dead of 2008 are not the only victims of governmental amnesia: The families of persons missing since the Lebanese Civil War are still campaigning to uncover the fate of their loved ones.

More than 17,400 individuals "disappeared" during those darkest days of Lebanon's history, and while most are presumed dead, hundreds are thought to still be languishing in Syrian prisons. However, an amnesty law for all crimes perpetrated before March 1991 gave protection to those responsible for the disappearances and the government all but dropped the issue.

But forgetting is something the families of the disappeared refuse to do and in 2008 continued to pressure the government. On April 10, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Support of the Lebanese in Detention and Exile held a news conference outside the UN building in Beirut, where several families have been holding a sit-in protest for the last three years. Director Ghazi Aad lamented the failure of the Lebanese government to investigate the disappeared, saying, "Lebanon is party to this crime in its refusal to take the issue seriously."

Impunity in Lebanon looks likely to continue in 2009 as the country's judiciary is weak and not fully independent: The government only finalized long-overdue appointments in the sector in December. In addition, activists are still campaigning to abolish torture and ill-treatment, which Human Rights Watch (HRW) said "remain a serious problem in Lebanese detention facilities."

Testimonies gathered by a number of Lebanese rights groups from former detainees indicate that security officials at the Military Intelligence unit of the Defense Ministry, the Information Branch of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), the Drug Repression Bureau detention facilities in Beirut and Zahle, and some police stations, beat and tortured detainees.

Though Lebanon ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2000, it has yet to submit a report that was due in 2001 about the measures it is taking to abide by the convention, and torture against detainees is thought to be widespread.

Over the course of 2008, however, the Lebanese government trained police officers and prison guards in human rights and provided full access to the International Committee of the Red Cross to detention centers, indicating change is taking place, albeit on a small scale. Although over 40 prisoners still face the death penalty, no prisoner has been executed since 2004. It is expected Lebanon will this year begin drafting a law abolishing the practice after it supported a second UN resolution in December calling for a moratorium on capital punishment.

Meanwhile in 2008, freedom of expression suffered a blow as lawyer and human rights activist Mohammad Mughraby faced trial in a Beirut criminal court for a speech made in 2003 at the European Parliament. In his speech, Mughraby criticized Lebanon's military court system, noting allegations that suspects brought before military courts were tortured, as well as the lack of legal training of the judges in those courts.

Mughraby has faced the charge, as well as accusations of slander, before. His trial in 2008 was therefore criticized as a breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Lebanon is a party and which stipulates that no one should be tried or punished a second time for an offense for which they have been acquitted in a previous trial. Although a judge dropped the charges against Mughraby in November, the Lebanese government is pursuing other prosecutions against him.

Other violations to freedom of expression in 2008 included the hospitalization of journalist Omar Harqous after he was attacked by supporters of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and the burning or forcible closure of offices belonging to Saad Hariri's Future TV and Al-Mustaqbal newspaper during the sectarian fighting in May.

Lebanon's refugee population continued to suffer from a lack of legal status and poverty in 2008, as well as high drop-out rates from schools and inadequate access to healthcare. According to a survey by the Danish Refugee Council in late 2007, there are some 50,000 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, 77.5 percent of whom entered illegally.

Their plight has improved since 2007, however, with Lebanon gaining international notoriety for detaining and deporting high numbers of Iraqis. In February 2008, Iraqis in Lebanon gained official recognition as refugees and several have been able to acquire legal status after the government introduced a regularization program.

According to Amnesty International, however, "Iraqi refugees are still being arrested in Lebanon albeit on a much reduced scale." Just two months into the regularization program, the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees said 22 Iraqis had been arrested and detained.

In November 2008, a representative from Save the Children Sweden said Lebanon was "the most difficult place" to live as a Palestinian refugee. Some 409,700 Palestinians reside in overcrowded camps lacking basic infrastructure and suffer from a "complete lack of integration," according to Zara Sejberg, as well as inadequate access to healthcare and education. They also endure the highest levels of abject poverty of all Palestinian refugees, the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA has said.

Although the Lebanese Cabinet established the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee in 2005 in an effort to improve the plight of Palestinian refugees, it has produced little in terms of concrete reform over the last year. Palestinians continue to be barred from all but the most menial professions, forbidden from owning property and many analysts believe their situation has deteriorated since Islamist group Fatah al-Islam engaged the Lebanese Armed Forces in bloody fighting at the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in 2007. The camp, which was reduced to rubble in the fighting, has yet to be rebuilt and its inhabitants remain displaced.

Lebanese women also continued to face discriminatory laws and insufficient protection from domestic and family violence over the course of the year. Despite active campaigning, Lebanese women married to non-Lebanese men still cannot pass on their nationality to their husbands or children and continue to face harmful stereotyping even in official school textbooks.

Although constituting 56 percent of the Lebanese population, women have less than 5 percent representation in government and complain they face insurmountable obstacles entering politics. Activists have seen little progress made on their call for a 35 percent women's quota in government.

By the end of 2008, Lebanon had made no steps to ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), though Clause 61 of the Ministerial Statement issued in August remarked that the Cabinet would "work toward implementing Lebanon's commitment to international conventions and in particular to CEDAW."

The clause also stated that the government would "also seek to address all forms of violence against females."

More than 200,000 female migrant domestic workers, excluded from Lebanese labor laws, also continued to face inadequate protection from workplace exploitation and abuse. Migrant workers continued to complain of withheld wages, overwork, and little access to the legal system when abused. According to HRW, at least one migrant worker dies in Lebanon every week, often while attempting to flee abusive employers. The Lebanese authorities rarely investigate these deaths, and abusive employers are almost never prosecuted. "Lebanon lags far behind almost every country in the region when it comes to protecting migrant women's rights," said HRW representative Nisha Varia in December, adding 2008 "marked a year of missed opportunities" on the issue. Nevertheless, HRW has said it has noticed increasing media coverage on the issue over the last 12 months. In September, senior Shiite cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah made the treatment of domestic workers of religious importance when he issued a fatwa, or religious edict, urging employers to refrain from physical violence and/or sexual harassment against their employees.

In late June, secretary general of Amnesty International Irene Khan visited Lebanon, urging the government to reaffirm its commitment to human rights through concrete action. But although the government claims to be developing a National Human Rights Plan, little information about it has materialized and rights campaigners look set to face another uphill struggle in 2009, especially if sectarian violence breaks out again.

Copyright The Daily Star 2009.