Tripoli protesters set Hezbollah flags ablaze

July 30, 2011
By Antoine Amrieh

TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Supporters of Syria’s popular uprising set Hezbollah flags ablaze during a small protest in the northern city of Tripoli Friday, while the imam of one of the city’s mosques lashed out at the party and Syria’s Baath party.

Following Friday prayers at the Hamza Mosque in the Qibbeh neighborhood of Tripoli, dozens of worshipers began to march to the nearby Ibn Sina Square, in what has become a weekly rally. The protesters were joined by others from Al-Wadie Mosque.

The demonstrators, some of whom are Syrian students residing in Tripoli, raised Islamic banners and posters of victims of the Syrian regime’s violent response to the uprising, which is now in its fifth month.

They also chanted slogans in support of Syrian protesters, a sign of solidarity and support for the popular movement.

The protesters burned the flags of Hezbollah, Syria’s ruling Baath Party and Israel, and several speeches were made at the Ibn Sina Square.

The imam of the Qibbeh Mosque, Sheikh Zakaria Masri, who speaks at the square each Friday, called on President Michel Sleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati to make Hezbollah into a political party like any other in Lebanon, as a punishment for its domestic use of arms and attempts to dominate Lebanon.

He also lashed out at Hezbollah’s sit-in, which the party held for around 18 months in a bid to topple the Cabinet of then-Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. The sit-in ended following the Doha accord.

Masri also lambasted the ruling Baath Party in Syria, saying that the Syrian regime “has used its arms against the Syrian people and commits against them all types of persecution, injustice … arrests, killings and torture only because they demand freedom and oppose the Baath party’s monopoly on power.”

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2011/Jul-30/Tripoli-protesters-set-Hezbollah-flags-ablaze.ashx.