Beirut – Downtown Beirut was transformed into a river of red-and-white Lebanese flags Thursday as emotional demonstrators turned the funeral of assassinated anti-Syrian politician Pierre Gemayel into a show of support for the beleaguered pro- Western government.
At times angry, ebullient, dispirited and defiant, protesters converged on Martyrs’ Square, where the slain man’s father, former President Amin Gemayel, told the crowd that the turnout marked “the start of a second revolution for the independence of Lebanon.”
The turnout provided an emotional boost for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, the pro-Western leader who’s trying to fend off a political coup by the country’s Shiite Hezbollah militia and prevent neighboring Syria from reasserting unwanted influence on the tiny nation’s fractious political system.
“We are not going to give up,” said Abed Kassir, an 18-year-old college student who took part with hundreds of thousands of others in the rally. “We want a democracy free of Syrian influence.”
Gemayel, 34, was gunned down Tuesday in a daylight attack that pushed the government one step closer to possible collapse and edged Lebanon toward a sectarian war.
The funeral for the son of a Maronite Christian political dynasty provided leaders of Lebanon’s pro-Western forces with a forum to energize their supporters.
Gemayel was the fifth prominent anti-Syrian figure to be assassinated in Lebanon since February 2005, when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a car bomb.
Then, as now, many Lebanese accused Syria of ordering the assassination in an attempt to undermine their government.
Hariri’s death sparked the Cedar Revolution, a peaceful protest movement that drove Syrian forces from Lebanon after decades of political dominance.
Syria has denied playing any role in any of the assassination plots of the past year, but it has been highly critical of an ongoing U.N. investigation focusing on allegations that high-level Syrian officials played a role in Hariri’s death.
While Thursday’s march ended peacefully as Gemayel’s flag-draped coffin was returned to his family home in the mountains for burial, there’s widespread concern about what will happen next.
Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, have postponed plans for their own street protests, but the group is still intent on bringing down Siniora’s government.
The fall of the government would be a setback for U.S. efforts to spread democracy and would worry Sunni Muslim nations, including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, about growing Shiite power in the region.
