Two Greenpeace activists were slightly injured Monday while being manhandled by Lebanese army personnel during an anti-nuclear protest in front of the US embassy in Beirut, reported the Daily Star newspaper.
"We're peacefully protesting outside the confines of the United States Embassy. Why don't you let us express ourselves?" Greenpeace Lebanon campaigner Zeina Hajj cried as soldiers, kicked, shoved and dragged activists away from the iron gate fortifying the embassy.
"We're not trespassing on anyone's property or assaulting anyone," the paper quoted Hajj as telling the soldiers. "We just needed another five minutes to voice our opinion. We're expressing our rejection of the Star Wars program which will increase nuclear arsenals."
The US is currently testing a national missile defense program, dubbed Star Wars, whose aim is to intercept nuclear missiles in outer space.
About 20 activists, clad in black and their faces painted in deathly ashen colors, held up a yellow banner at the demonstration which said: "Stop Star Wars. No more Hiroshimas."
Soon after gathering at the gate, embassy security personnel stormed out from behind the gate, ordering the activists to move away and threatening to break photographers' cameras or confiscate film if they did not stop taking pictures immediately, said the paper.
A few minutes later, two jeeps carrying about a dozen soldiers arrived on the scene and ordered activists to disperse.
An officer asked demonstrators to move to the other side of the road, but Hajj protested, saying: "We want to express our voice, we want the US Embassy to see us."
An American diplomat who refused to give his name approached Hajj, who handed him a letter addressed to the newly appointed US ambassador, Vincent Battle.
US Embassy officials did not comment on the incident when contacted by the paper.
The soldiers started shoving, kicking and dragging activists, sometimes using their rifle butts to prod them along.
One girl suffered a gash on her head, while another was injured in the elbow.
"In the past, Russia was the US' enemy and that was the reason for having nuclear weapons, but who is the US' enemy now?" Hajj asked the soldiers. "This will only encourage other countries like India, Israel, Pakistan ... to adopt ballistic missile defense systems," Hajj said.
Greenpeace protesters had scheduled a 15-minute demonstration to commemorate the dropping of an atomic bomb by the US military on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, which ended World War II.
The protest action coincided with similar protests worldwide, with the first starting in Hiroshima itself, the paper added.
According to a Greenpeace report, 11 activists were arrested in Turkey as they demonstrated in front of the Incirlik Air Base, from where US and British warplanes patrol a "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq.
"The scars of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings will never fade," Greenpeace said.
"A further 50 years of nuclear weapons production has also taken its toll, not just upon communities around the world but also the environment." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
