Relatives of Lebanese Held in Syrian Jails Suspend ESCWA Sit-in

The relatives of Lebanese people held in Syrian jails announced on Thursday the suspension of the sit-in that they have been staging in downtown Beirut for years.

They declared that during a press conference at the ESCWA square that the sit-in will be lifted, but the tent they were staying in will remain “as a symbol of their cause”.

“We are nearing a new phase where we will no longer be victim to the exhaustion linked to remaining in the tent,” they explained for the shift in their approach.

“We can follow up on our cause through different means,” they added

“We have a national cause and the political class has used all sorts of excuses to avoid this issue,” they added.

“We have the right to find out the fate of our sons,” they demanded.

“We will continue with out pressure on officials and we will not stop until we achieve our rights,” they vowed.

“There has never been an official authority dedicated to handle our cause,” they lamented.

“Today however, we have the legal ground and we will therefore escalate our efforts,” they said.

MP Ghassan Mokhaiber, who was present at the conference, stated: “The tent is a symbol of the heroics of the relatives of the Lebanese prisoners.”

“It is necessary to adopt the draft-law linked to these prisoners,” he declared.

For over 20 years, more than 600 families -- Lebanese and Palestinian, Muslim and Christian -- have demanded authorities reveal the fate of thousands of political prisoners believed to have disappeared at the hands of Syrian troops who entered Lebanon shortly after the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Successive Lebanese governments have made apparent attempts to address the issue, even including it in cabinet programs.

Rights groups say thousands of men, women and children disappeared at the hands of Hafez Assad, Bashar's predecessor and late father, during the civil war, a spiraling bloodbath which tore Lebanon apart on confessional lines.

Syria withdrew from its smaller neighbor in 2005 under massive international pressure over the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri.

The Assad dynasty has long denied holding any prisoners of conscience, but on four different occasions between 1976 and 2000 has released Lebanese who had been held in Syrian prisons.

While Syria declared it no longer had any Lebanese detainees after the prisoner release in 2000, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem made a statement to the contrary during a fence-mending trip to Lebanon in 2008.

"Those who have waited more than 30 years since the start of the (Lebanese) civil war can wait another few weeks," Muallem said at the time.