On Wednesday, 21 June, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the personal emissary of French president Emmanuel Macron, arrived in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, to interfere in the Lebanese presidential elections. In a statement, the Lebanese Campaign for the Release of Georges Abdallah said that this visit comes as “the imperialist powers, in particular France, intervene to confirm their colonial role,” denouncing “French interference in Lebanese internal affairs and the visit of the French emissary Le Drian to Beirut, confirming our disgust for all who receive him.”
The statement emphasized the urgency of releasing the Lebanese communist and freedom fighter, Georges Abdallah, jailed in France since 1984 and eligible for release since 1999. It “demands that the struggler Georges Abdallah be considered a political prisoner in France, with all the diplomatic consequences that these words entail between the two countries.” Supporters of the campaign postered on walls from Saida to Tripoli in support of Abdallah, who has become a symbol of French imperialist interference in Lebanon and the ongoing resistance to it.
The full statement follows:
With every internal development, especially in electing a president for the Lebanese Republic, the imperialist powers, especially the French, intervene to confirm their colonial role, joining the actions of their obedient tools inside Lebanon.
On the other hand, France, the “democratic” country, keeps in its dungeons those who refused to indulge in civil war and pursued the Zionist war machine in the heart of imperialism. Yes, while the warlords were implementing plans for internal fighting, there were militants who destroyed the bridges of arms supply to the Zionists, and carried the principle of defending the Palestinian cause and liberating the land and its people… Here, we are specifically dicussing the internationalist struggler Georges Abdallah, the longest-held political prisoner in France and Europe, for 39 years behind bars. The French administration has not yet been able to absorb his freedom of thought!
This symbol of struggle, resistance and the correct representation of the will of the Lebanese people is still arbitrarily detained in his French cell. Therefore, the case of the Lebanese citizen, Georges Abdallah, must receive mandatory follow up! Doesn’t the national interest necessitate the rejection of the reactionary sectarian logic that the French emissary supports with his visit!
Is it reasonable for the French envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to arrive in Lebanon to move the wheel of the presidential election, instead of securing the French Minister of Interior’s signature on the decision to deport Georges Abdallah to his country, to be received and honored as we waited for the celebration of his liberation in 2013?!
The crisis of the capitalist and imperialist system, since the establishment of the Lebanese regime, is rampant through its agents, the princes of the sects who benefit from each other, and they are supported again today by the French administration.
Georges Abdallah, during the civil war, was saving the innocent from the clutches of the monsters driven by this imperialism.
The national campaign to liberate the prisoner, Georges Abdallah, denounces this French interference in the internal Lebanese affairs, and the visit of the French envoy, Le Drian, to the capital Beirut, and confirms its disgust with everyone who receives him and deals with him.
Georges Abdallah did not arrive in Beirut on January 14, 2013, as the French court had approved, because the French government received an order from Hillary Clinton to obstruct the implementation of the judicial decision. This is what happened, and today we consider the imprisonment of Georges Abdallah to be a form of administrative detention.
Therefore, the national campaign demands that the struggler Georges Abdallah be considered a political prisoner in France, with all the diplomatic consequences that these words entail between the two countries.
The National Campaign to Liberate the Prisoner Georges Abdallah
