How students and women saved the revolution
Sabine Saliba was born and raised in Lebanon. She spent more than 10 years abroad and is now back in Lebanon. She has been working for CRIN for the past nine years and is now the regional representative in the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the citizenship debate and the human rights involved for children.
[22 January 2020] - ‘The revolution is a woman’ is a sentence we started hearing and repeating from the very early days of the Lebanese revolution. It was obvious that women were not going to take a step back and follow men this time. From the beginning on 17 October, they’ve been at the forefront of the marches, head to head with the police, defying armed men and shaping debates behind microphones.
I started like everyone else, joining the masses with a flag and shouting revolutionary slogans. Then we all slowly found the different roles we needed to play. The real heroes played a number of roles. Some of them left their homes and slept on the streets, closing main roads, while others organised at 7am every morning to clean the streets.
I recently opened a centre with a vegan coffee shop and a yoga and art studio and we decided to offer coffee to the people sleeping on the street. This is how I met some of our heroes. They were all very young, some even under 18 years of age. In the area where we spent most of our time, the men told me how it was all started by four young women and how they all followed their lead. I was very surprised by the credit they gave women and I kept noticing how they constantly tried to empower us. One morning, we were attacked by a group of violent men who oppose the revolution. As I was running back from the other side of the road to warn everyone that they were coming, I saw a man with a megaphone and asked him to tell everyone to retreat behind the army. He gave me the megaphone and said that people will listen more if I spoke instead of a man. This might seem insignificant, but it represents so much to me. When we were demonstrating in 2005 against the Syrian occupation, women were never behind any microphone, they weren’t empowered to lead anything. It’s not that we were less aware of our role; the space was just not open for us.
The prime minister resigned on 29 October and things started to calm down, even though we were still at the beginning of our fight. The demands include a new government made only of technocrats that will lead the way to reforms and early parliamentary elections. Banks, governmental institutions and schools reopened. Citizenship and other debates were and are still held every evening in public squares. On the streets, we decided that blocking roads was not effective anymore and that it was time for a second stage of the revolution, but we could sense everyone’s fatigue.
That’s when students took over! All across Lebanon, school and university students took to the streets to protest against the resumption of regular classes amidst the current political turmoil in the country. Nationwide protests were organised and they didn't back off despite being subject to threats and violent attacks by school authorities and even security forces. In a way, I wasn’t very surprised. In many discussions I’ve had with this generation, I noticed that the youth are much less bound by sectarian differences and have found a way to detach themselves from the bounds of the corrupt political parties in a way my generation hasn’t.
And the revolution continues!
It took different shapes and volumes over the last three months and as the 100th day approaches, I sat down with a few young women activists to assess the first results of the revolution in regards to the gender equality and LGBTQ agendas. While Lebanon is thought to be more liberal than other countries in the region, its laws are still very conservative and discriminatory towards these groups. In general, everyone felt that the space is more open today for rights-based debates. Maria[1], 16, explains that the tone she uses with adults, including men, has changed. She feels less intimidated to express her opinions, at home and at school. She told me how she hadn't realised how much she censored her thoughts before when talking to men, out of fear of being judged and rejected. Basma, 17, told me how she became friends with a small group of gay women, most of them under the age of 20. She met them on the street and slowly started spending more time with them. For the first time in a long time, she doesn't need to hide who she is - at least when she’s with them. She doesn't know if she will be able to come out to her family anytime soon but she said she definitely feels less insecure about her sexuality.
The road is long with discrimination against women and disempowerment of young people still present in law and practice. Nevertheless, the fact that so many of us are able to defy these established structures and follow the lead of groups that were usually expected to only follow, is a big step forward. It’s very important to build on this energy and continue the public debates to remind everyone of changes that absolutely need to happen when the new system is in place.
Over the past three months, we finally met each other, and we discovered that the ugliness in our country was only the reflection of the politicians who many were hiding behind and it reminded us of how beautiful we all are, in all our colours and shapes.
[1] The names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals.