“Concerning Law Sparks Worry…Tuesday Marked for “Great Anger”!”

“Lebanon Debate”

The head of the National Federation of Labor Unions and Employees, Castro Abdullah, issued an urgent appeal calling on the Lebanese, especially the old tenants, to take to the streets in a comprehensive national movement next Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. in Riad El Solh Square – Beirut, in rejection of what he described as “unjust laws that threaten the right of the Lebanese to housing, work and dignity.”

Abdullah said in an interview with “Lebanon Debate”: “We address the call of anger and action in defense of the right to housing and the dignity of tenants, before people are thrown into the street. What is happening today is a continuation of the approach of greed and injustice, and a new attempt to impoverish the Lebanese and displace them from their offices, shops and homes, by imposing laws that serve the interests of a few real estate merchants and financial sharks.”

He pointed out that “the Committee for the Defense of Tenants, together with the committees of old tenants in various governorates, called for a mass sit-in in rejection of the Non-Residential Rent Law No. 11/25, and demanding the reformulation of the Residential Rent Law in a way that protects people from eviction, displacement and blackmail.”

Abdullah added: “The new law deprives people of their acquired rights, and undermines what the previous laws and the constitution protected. They have plundered the eviction compensations and ‘goodwill’ payments that citizens paid with the sweat of their brows, and today they want to impose an unfair fair rent that will burn commercial markets and turn them into graveyards of livelihood and dignity, and the federation stands by the tenants in their battle for survival, and the battle is not only legal, but social and national par excellence.”

He continued: “We will not be displaced and we will not be sold, just as we say no to the alliance of libertines from real estate merchants, no to financial sharks, and no to those who legislate injustice in the name of the law. We will turn Riad El Solh Square into a popular volcano that rejects tyranny and breaks the shackles of exploitation.”

Abdullah concluded, stressing that “taking to the streets today is a national and human duty. We will not pay the price for their crises, and we will not be evicted from our homes, for our dignity is not for sale.”