The Media and Communication coordinator of the Free Patriotic Movement, Maya Maalouf, confirmed during a press conference held to talk about the unfortunate events that took place in the “Sar el Waket” episode on MTV last Thursday, that “the campaign of slander and distortion of facts began from the first minute after the altercation started on the show, and everything we heard about the issue from the involved station can’t be further from the truth.”
Maalouf pointed out that “the accusations against the young men of the Free Patriotic Movement of assault, pre-planning of causing trouble, setting ambushes, breaking cameras, in addition to carrying weapons, are pure lies and slander,” considering that “talking about the disappearance of the DVR is surprising, as these recordings are placed in a safe place that cannot be easily known or accessed, so we demand the security forces to reveal the DVR and the identity of those who hid it, and we challenge the MTV administration to reveal these recordings to the public.”
She stressed that “after the slander campaign, and the MTV management’s decision to exclude the party’s youth from the “Sar el Waket” program and limit participation to its leaders, the Free Patriotic Movement announces its boycott of the program from both base and leadership until the station redeems itself after the wrong-doing it committed toward the party and its young people.”
She added that “those who follow the media and the social network will notice one thing and one thing only: the insistence on showing the party as an armed militia and accusing its youth of being bullies, and this is the directive that was given since we are aware of how our opponents operate.”
She explained that “the Free Patriotic Movement was, is and will remain the party of the honest good people, no matter how hard some would try to make it look bad and similar to other parties that languish in their ugly militia history.”
Maalouf reminded that “the Free Patriotic Party members and youth are aware of the difficulty of the period we are going through, but they knowingly chose to have their word as weapon.” She explained, “it is very easy to carry a bat and hit with it or a weapon and shoot with it, but what is hard is to choose words and only words as weapon. No one thinks that we do so out of fear or weakness, we chose not to use violence against our neighbor, our relative or our brother.”
She also pointed at the wounded young men and woman sitting next to her and said that 11 people spent their night at the hospital after being examined by forensic doctors. She questioned how can the party’s guys be the offenders when they were the only ones beaten. She asked to see any video showing the young men beating anyone.
She also talked about the “Old guard” and said that “contrary to what is being portrayed, those are neither militiamen nor security people or retired armed forces. Those are a group of young men and women who accompanied General Aoun since the 1988 and when it became clear to them that the campaign was targeting the President of the Republic and the head of the party and the FPM exclusively, a small group of these men and women decided to go back to being active on the ground and ironically, they are facing today the same people they were facing during the Syrian occupation era, those who form what we call today the “corrupt system””.
Finally, Maalouf reminded the media that the aim of the young people taking part in talk-shows should be bringing them together, meeting and getting close instead of hating each other and hitting one another. She asked the media to instill positivity and brotherhood instead of inciting hatred.
For his part, the activist Elias Al-Zoghbi explained what happened to him and said: “we were exposed to an ambush on the “Sar el Waket” program, prepared by security members inside the station, and we fell into it.” He talked about how he was called by his name by a security guard and how he was heavily beaten on the head”.
