http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/May-07/172558-laique-pride-marches-for-secularism-womens-rights.ashx#axzz1uJnQqTDm
Laique Pride marches for secularism, women's rights
May 07, 2012 11:19 AM (Last updated: May 07, 2012 04:26 PM)
By Justin Salhani
The Daily Star
)
A woman speaks at the Speaker's Corner during the Lebanese Laique Pride march
in Beirut, Sunday, May 6, 2012. (The Daily Star/Grace Kassab)
EIRUT: Six hundred people marched Sunday with the group Lebanese Laique Pride
from Sanayeh to Corniche al-Manara at Ain al-Mreisseh, chanting slogans in
support of secularism and calling for women's rights and media freedom.
Yalda Younes, co-founder and core team member of Laique Pride, whose tenets are
equality among all Lebanese citizens and the separation of religion and
politics, told The Daily Star that the group chose to march for six specific
demands.
In addition to enacting a unified Civil Code for the Personal Status Law,
historically a major goal of Lebanese secularists, several of the demands
concerned women's rights.
They included: passing the Law for Protection of Women from Family Violence
submitted by Kafa to the Lebanese parliament; rejecting the parliamentary
committee's distortions of the draft law and adopting Kafa’s original draft,
which criminalizes marital rape; abolishing article 522 of the penal law, which
drops charges against a rapist if he marries his victim; amending the
nationality law so as to give Lebanese women the right to grant their
nationality to their children and spouses.
Laique Pride also issued two demands in support of media freedom. The
organization called for passing the draft law Prohibiting the Pre-Censorship of
Cinema and Theatre launched by Maharat Foundation and Marsad Al-Raqaba, and
withdrawing the draft law for the Lebanese Internet Regulation Act (LIRA)
proposed by the Lebanese Ministry of Information.
Among the marchers were the Lebanese “secular clowns,” a West African
percussion group and secular clubs from universities throughout Lebanon. For
the first time, secular clubs from Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) and l'Académie
Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) were in attendance, while American University
of Beirut (AUB)’s secular club, long a mainstay of such rallies, also
participated.
Before the march began, the clowns passed out yellow roses to Lebanese security
personnel, who greeted them with smiles.
The march concluded at Ain al-Mreisseh with a nod to London’s Hyde Park, famed
for its Speakers' Corner. Upon finishing the march, each person had the option
of climbing a small ladder, speaking into a megaphone and answering the
question, “How would you change Lebanon?”
Despite the fact that the march attracted a much smaller crowd than rallies for
traditional political parties, Younes maintained that the secular movement is
gaining ground. She cited the participation of ALBA and USJ’s secular groups,
as well as volunteers in Baalbek distributing over 3,000 flyers in their
region, both unprecedented phenomena, as heralding a greater push for concerted
action among Lebanese secularists.
“Minorities have always changed the world, not majorities,” she said
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