We Are All Samir

The killers think that by assassinating Samir Kassir, the Lebanese would stop criticizing the rotten Syrian regime. I have bad news for them.

Words cannot describe how furious I am at the killing of one of my favorite journalists. Samir was a great inspiration for every freedom-aspiring Lebanese, but more crucially, Syrian.

He was killed because of his ambitious and uncompromising stances on democracy. When most other journalists were talking about the Lebanese elections, Samir Kassir took it upon himself to dig deeper into the Syrian Baathist regime, exposing all its ills, and concluding that it will receive the same fate of its Iraqi counterpart.

When everyone else was talking about the Beirut spring, Samir was busy with the Damascus spring. He wanted for the Syrian people what he wanted for the Lebanese.

By killing him, they think that they’re sending a message: don’t meddle with our internal politics. I guess they just don’t learn that assassination always backfires.

I have news for them: nothing’s going to stop the Lebanese from calling a spade a spade, even if that spade is in Syria.

P.S: as an act of solidarity, I have changed my profile picture into that of Samir’s as a symbolic way of saying “we are all Samir”.

I will keep it for 5 days. All other Lebanese bloggers are invited to do the same.