Lebanese Communist Party marks 82nd anniversary of its founding

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -PFLP

PFLP, November 1, 2009

The Lebanese Communist Party celebrated the 82nd anniversary of its founding with a popular festival in the city of Baalbek on October 29, 2009. Comrade Samir Lubani (Abu Jaber), a member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, joined the celebration along with a large PFLP delegation.

Dr. Khaled Hadadeh, General Secretary of the Lebanese Communist Party, spoke at the event, alongside Comrade Lubani and a number of speakers from civil and social institutions in Lebanon. Dr. Hadadeh addressed the party's founders and martyrs, describing their determination to struggle and their commitment to freedom in Palestine and Lebanon. He emphasized the importance of combating sectarianism in Lebanon, saying that a citizen has rights, not as a Sunni or Shi'a or Druze or Christian, but as a citizen of a homeland rather than a union of sects.

He addressed the Israeli threats on Lebanon, saying that these threats only confirm the continued danger to Lebanon posed by Israel, and that the sectarian system places Lebanon at great risk to the enemy. He called for a national democratic solution that can resolve the national crisis and support resistance to the occupation and to the enemy's threats.

Comrade Lubani saluted the LCP on its anniversary, saying that the Party has made its mark in various walks of life in Lebanon, through the culture of the party, its solidarity, its great intellectuals in the world of culture and thought, its giants of the workers' movement, its participation in addressing the Arab society with political and cultural magazines and newspapers, developing the level of thought and the level of society.

Comrade Lubani continued, discussing the LCP's constant role in defense of poor and oppressed peoples and its role in developing a class analysis of the enemy and in confronting capitalism, as well as in its analysis and confrontation of sectarianism. He recalled the experience of joint struggle between the PFLP and the LCP in the National Resistance Front, confronting the enemy, and the sacrifices of the LCP for Lebanon, Palestine and the Arab people.

He stated the pride of the Front in its relationship with the LCP, saying that they provided an environment of militancy and intellectual vitality and produced heroes and leaders, such as George Habash, George Hawi, Ghassan Kanafani, Hussein Marwa and Abu Ali Mustafa.

Comrade Lubani celebrated the courage of LCP members in the prisons of the enemy and drew attention to the case of Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat, the General Secretary of the PFLP, inside the occupation jails, sentenced to 30 years, who continues to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation or its counterfeit court, saying that as the Front celebrated the LCP's founding anniversary, it also renewed its solidarity with Comrade Sa'adat.

He concluded with a review of the Palestinian situation, stressing the importance of Palestinian national unity to confront the occupation, as well as the Palestinian situation in Lebanon, emphasizing the importance of rebuilding the destroyed Nahr el-Bared refugee camp and securing civil, social and human rights of Palestinians in Lebanon. He saluted the LCP's struggle to unite progressive forces in the fight for freedom, justice and progress.