Sanayaa Park Refugee Centre, Lebanon - Sun August 6th - Photo Report
GS | 11.08.2006 16:15 | Lebanon War 2006 | Anti-militarism
Sanayaa Park is one of the many homes to the thousands of refugees that are flooding into Beirut at present. The small ornamental garden near the Beirut financial district has become a village for people fleeing from the south or southern Beirut suburbs. It is hot and dusty and hundreds of families sleep on mats in the open air with no shelter and few facilities. Sleep is difficult with the constant sound of bombing and sonic booms from Israeli fighter jets.
Ryan Salaheddine, one of the volunteers who staff the centre, shows me round.
‘I came here to visit my family from the United Arab Emirates where I live. I am an internet security analayst. I came here before the bombing started, I decided to stay to help in any way I could. I could not sit and watch it on the TV. My cousin told me that homeless families were gathering in this park. So we established a small committee mainly from university students. We are not connected to any NGO or official organisation. We asked around the neighbourhoods for donations and food and people were very generous, giving whatever they could. We did not originally want people to sleep here. We wanted this to just be a refugee contact centre. It is unsafe and unhealthy to live here. There are no basic facilities for hygiene and it is an obvious target for a bombing with no cover from attack - but now there is no choice. At first there were 50 people here, on Tuesday we did a count and found that there were 870 people sleeping in the park, from 179 families. Many more have arrived since then. Our main fear is that soon we could see an epidemic of diseases like Cholera and Typhoid that are presently unheard of Lebanon. We found last week that 60% of the camp children had lice; we treated everyone as a precaution. We have been giving vaccinations to people wherever possible. We have established a First Aid tent and local people and pharmacies have donated medicines. We also have volunteer doctors and a dentist that come every day but we don’t have 24 hour medical care.’
I am introduced to Bilal Awada who, along with his wife and fourteen month-old baby, has been here for 20 days. He had run a mobile phone shop in the southern border town of Aitaroun, previously home to around 5,000 Lebanese of mixed faiths. He tells me their story.
‘After the second day of the war we left. At first we were not sure if the situation would escalate. Then 50% of the town fled. We came with just our clothes. The Israelis do not differentiate between the Hizbollah army and ordinary people. Fifteen days ago there were two massacres in the town. An entire family of thirteen were killed when their home took a direct hit in an air strike, another smaller family were also wiped out. My cousin and his family came to visit from Germany just before the war started, we have had no news of him. He has seven children. There is no power, water or working phone lines in the town.
'Here it is very difficult. There are very few washrooms and showers. Care is provided for the baby; milk and diapers, but I still have to feed and clothe my family. There is no consistent medical care, if someone has a stomach ache they are given some herbs and have to wait till the morning to see a doctor. We have heard that planes are still landing in Beirut but we have not seen any of this aid. All the roads bringing aid from Syria have been bombed. Are trying to starve us as well? My uncle has a small business I have been earning a small wage from him helping out in his shop.
'Now I want to ask you a question? These countries like Germany, France and Belgium, the ones who are known for their compassion and campaigning for human rights? Why do they not let us in? Even if the adults have to stay why do they not take the children until the war is over?’
Good question……
Words and pictures copyright the author but free to progressive media, NGOs ect. Contact by email for details.
‘I came here to visit my family from the United Arab Emirates where I live. I am an internet security analayst. I came here before the bombing started, I decided to stay to help in any way I could. I could not sit and watch it on the TV. My cousin told me that homeless families were gathering in this park. So we established a small committee mainly from university students. We are not connected to any NGO or official organisation. We asked around the neighbourhoods for donations and food and people were very generous, giving whatever they could. We did not originally want people to sleep here. We wanted this to just be a refugee contact centre. It is unsafe and unhealthy to live here. There are no basic facilities for hygiene and it is an obvious target for a bombing with no cover from attack - but now there is no choice. At first there were 50 people here, on Tuesday we did a count and found that there were 870 people sleeping in the park, from 179 families. Many more have arrived since then. Our main fear is that soon we could see an epidemic of diseases like Cholera and Typhoid that are presently unheard of Lebanon. We found last week that 60% of the camp children had lice; we treated everyone as a precaution. We have been giving vaccinations to people wherever possible. We have established a First Aid tent and local people and pharmacies have donated medicines. We also have volunteer doctors and a dentist that come every day but we don’t have 24 hour medical care.’
I am introduced to Bilal Awada who, along with his wife and fourteen month-old baby, has been here for 20 days. He had run a mobile phone shop in the southern border town of Aitaroun, previously home to around 5,000 Lebanese of mixed faiths. He tells me their story.
‘After the second day of the war we left. At first we were not sure if the situation would escalate. Then 50% of the town fled. We came with just our clothes. The Israelis do not differentiate between the Hizbollah army and ordinary people. Fifteen days ago there were two massacres in the town. An entire family of thirteen were killed when their home took a direct hit in an air strike, another smaller family were also wiped out. My cousin and his family came to visit from Germany just before the war started, we have had no news of him. He has seven children. There is no power, water or working phone lines in the town.
'Here it is very difficult. There are very few washrooms and showers. Care is provided for the baby; milk and diapers, but I still have to feed and clothe my family. There is no consistent medical care, if someone has a stomach ache they are given some herbs and have to wait till the morning to see a doctor. We have heard that planes are still landing in Beirut but we have not seen any of this aid. All the roads bringing aid from Syria have been bombed. Are trying to starve us as well? My uncle has a small business I have been earning a small wage from him helping out in his shop.
'Now I want to ask you a question? These countries like Germany, France and Belgium, the ones who are known for their compassion and campaigning for human rights? Why do they not let us in? Even if the adults have to stay why do they not take the children until the war is over?’
Good question……
Words and pictures copyright the author but free to progressive media, NGOs ect. Contact by email for details.
GS
e-mail:
guy.smallman@btinternet.com
Comments
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morals or justice cannot save the people of Lebanon in the Age of Blair
11.08.2006 19:57
'Now I want to ask you a question? These countries like Germany, France and Belgium, the ones who are known for their compassion and campaigning for human rights? Why do they not let us in? Even if the adults have to stay why do they not take the children until the war is over?’
UNQUOTE
I guess he means if one forgets Germany's gift of nuclear cruise missile firing submarines to Israel, French atrocities in Algeria, and Belgium's genocide in the Congo, to mention just three of many proofs to the contary.
What we think of as 'civilisation' is proving to be an extremely thin veneer, and now that veneer is peeling off, revealing a rotting and putrid mass underneath.
For too long, people were foolish enough to invest in evil state-run psy-ops like Amnesty International, and think that by doing so, they were protecting their future. AI, as you should all recall, was responsible for kicking off the First Gulf War (a war that eventually cost the lives of more than one million Iraqis) when it co-published full page ads in newspapers describing Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait throwing babies out of incubators. The story, of course, was a TOTAL LIE, concocted between Amnesty International, a NY PR-agency, and the Kuwaiti Ambassador. However, such things DO happen...
QUOTE
In a dispatch posted at 9:44am Makkah time Thursday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that US occupation forces have completely taken over ar-Ramadi General Hospital and turned it into a US military camp for American troops, throwing the hospital patients out of the building.
The ar-Ramadi correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that ambulances had to evacuate the patients from the hospital to al-Fallujah General Hospital because the Americans had ordered them all thrown out. Ambulance drivers told Mafkarat al-Islam that US troops in armored vehicles and armor-plated Humvees stormed into ar-Ramadi General Hospital in the northern part of the city and cleared all the patients, despite their illnesses and injuries, out of the hospital and on to the yard in front of the facility. The Americans ordered ambulance drivers and relatives in the hospital to take all the patients outside to the front yard. From there the ambulance drivers transported them to al-Fallujah.
Meanwhile, the Americans transformed the hospital into a military encampment, erecting barriers of sand and concrete around the building and deploying American snipers on the roof to prevent anyone from approaching the commandeered facility.
US troops shoot, kill pregnant woman, wound husband as they approach ar-Ramadi hospital building Thursday night.
Thursday night, in a dispatch posted at 9:14pm Makkah time, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier US occupation forces had shot and killed a pregnant Iraqi woman and seriously wounded her husband as they were coming out towards the city hospital where the wife expected to deliver her child.
UNQUOTE (Iraqi resistance report 10-aug-06)
This TRUE story, of course, will NEVER form the basis of any full page ad produced by Amnesty International.
The Blair/Israel Holocaust of Lebanon directly connects to 'liberals' giving money/support to rotten organisations like Amnesty International, just because some so called 'left wing' comedians told them to do so. Protecting the Earth is a serious business, just like any great Human endeavor. If this job is badly done, it will follow the pattern of cowboy building work, ie., good on the surface, seems fine in good weather, but come the first major storm, and the whole thing will collapse.
The people of Lebanon assume that their exists a mechanism of justice and compassion, but they are sorely mistaken. Instead, all their 'liberal' friends in the West have indulged for decades in self-delusion, hyping up mechanisms that, in reality exist only to serve the enemies of freedom and justice.
Today, the last stand is that made by the individual, able to use the Internet to propagate the truths that organisations like AI were set up to suppress. This, of course, is a wonderful thing in and of itself, but is unlikely to compensate for the lack of organised mechanisms that we assumed existed to prevent the evil of monsters like Blair flourishing.
Of course, Blair and his people have spent the greater part of their energies manufacturing exactly this situation. Blair's people sit at the top of EVERY major organisation in the UK, both official and non-governmental. At a world level, the same is true. The only true counter-forces that occur happen when powerful nations see their self-interests lying in different directions from one another.
This hierarchy may seem old fashioned, but it is real. Everything else has shown itself to be an illusion. Just the power of nations, the monsters that rule them, and the alliances that may be formed between them. Did we really think that Humanity had evolved past these times? If we did, it would hardly be the first time. In fact, every time a civilisation has turned to trade, it has fooled itself into thinking that that somehow war lies behind it. Meanwhile monsters (sometimes found within, and sometimes found on the outside) see Humans that live in a society based on trade as the ultimate sheep. Our very stability, optimism, economic growth, and willingness to co-operate and work toward the greater good makes us perfect fodder for the warlord- whether as victim or servant or both.
For the concerned individual, these are tough times. Read your 'liberal' newspapers, and you aid Blair. Go on your state-organised 'anti-war' demonstrations, and you aid Blair. Pay your dues to Amnesty International, and you most certainly aid Blair.
Instead, individual action counts, NOT group activities (by which I mean group activities 'approved' by Blair- Fathers For Justice, and Animal Rights groups have sometimes proved very effective). Countering Blair's depraved propaganda with as many people as you feel able. Actively NOT supporting Blair's charity propaganda campaigns on the BBC, and letting people know why, at school or in the office, you will never participate in any event organised by the racist evil scumbags of the mass media. Ensuring, if you have kids at school, that all offensive Blair activity (like PR visits by the police) are banned with respect to your children (as is your right in law).
If enough people act powerfully as individuals, decent, true anti-Blair organisations will start to spontaneously form. Of course, to start afresh this late in the game is hardly likely to allow us to time enough to stop Blair's WW3, but may allow us to better deal with the aftermath of the horrors that Blair is going to inflict on the Earth. The point is that soon enough WE will be asking the same questions that are being asked in the article by people in Lebanon. And the answer to "who can help us" is going to have to be "we must help ourselves" whether we like this fact or not.
twilight