Beirut, Lebanon’s garbage crisis has been an ongoing issue due to government inaction and corruption. Protestors created the campaign group You Stink in mid-July of 2015 with demands to solve the calamity. The group gathered on the city streets of Beirut on a Sunday August of 2015 by the thousands – marking one of the largest public action protests in Lebanon in quite a few years. The demonstration followed security forces discharged tear gas and rubber bullets just a day before at a protest in central Beirut. And although Sunday’s protests began peacefully, things ended in violence as once again police interfered with water cannons and tear gas. In total, 400 protestors were harmed during the weekend.
The protest group was formed after the main city’s landfill closed and trash began to pile up on local city streets and residential areas. No preparations for another landfill site were being made and so the garbage crisis became a serious health issue.
In the months following, illegal trash disposal thrived. People began to burn their trash and dump it in valleys and water sources.
The trash crisis is not the only problem that Lebanon faces. Their government is unfortunately in a weak rut. 2016 marks two years that the country has been without a president, the last one being Michel Suleiman whose presidential term concluded in May of 2014. The country’s electricity is intermittent, a way of life that started following Lebanon’s Civil War (1975-1990). In the day, Lebanon used to export power to Syria, and now parts of Lebanon struggle to keep lights on.
When I was in Lebanon this past summer the power would go out about every 30 minutes during class at the American University of Beirut. AC would shut off, we were left in the dark, and technology was lost. Only movie theatres, extremely wealthy households, and certain places in the city have the privilege of a large, diesel-run generator to supply around-the-clock energy. But even then – energy is still a privilege. The diesel-run generators are also pumping chemicals into the already polluted atmosphere. Even the sign of the local utility headquarters, Electricite du Liban (EDL) is merely half-lit.
The You Stink campaign is not one of just garbage pile up, but rather the deeper stench of a foul sectarian government that is deteriorating more and more every day and a crumbling state infrastructure.
More than 20 parliament meetings have taken place in hopes of trying to find a new president – but no agreement can be made.
In 2015 Lebanon’s Minister of the Environment, Mohammad Machnouk, announced that a contract had been signed between two major companies to take care of the trash problem. He hoped that it would be an end to protests. But it wasn’t. For the trash remained piled and people were still angry.
This anger should not turn into violence, though. You Stink needs to rely on peaceful protests to get their message across. It might take more time but the group will lose support if uprisings begin to harm more than help.
The underlying problem with Lebanon’s government is that it is very hard to change. Due to its sectarian character and binding by law the Lebanese government requires that the president must be Christian, the speaker of parliament Shia and the prim minister Sunni. It is a delicately balanced system that has proved to be both stable and dysfunctional.
The You Stink campaign is the only non-sectarian of protest in more than a decade. And they are not done fighting.
