Galerie Claude Lemand

BEIRUT 04.08.2020. - Duty of MEMORY, TRUTH, JUSTICE and SOLIDARITY.

Claude Lemand:

On this anniver­sary of the dev­as­tating explo­sions of August 4, 2020, which destroyed the port of Beirut and part of the city, killing 216 inno­cent people, injuring thou­sands of res­i­dents and migrant workers, and plunging the country into horror, chaos, poverty, and despair… all because of dom­i­nant clans and incom­pe­tent, cor­rupt leaders who have no sense of the state, the public good, or the Lebanese people, and who, for decades, have defended only their own inter­ests. They have plunged Lebanon into polit­ical, eco­nomic, finan­cial, social, health, and even cul­tural chaos.

But Lebanon remains a country from which light shines forth, even from the deepest dark­ness.

We have a duty to remember, to seek truth, jus­tice, and sol­i­darity with the Lebanese people and the world of arts and cul­ture in this beloved country. We are angry, we are sad­dened, but we want to bear wit­ness to the lumi­nous face of another Lebanon, a melting pot of civ­i­liza­tions and cul­tures spread across five con­ti­nents. This Lebanon, the inventor of the mer­chant marine and the alphabet, the facil­i­tator of mil­lennia-old ties between peo­ples, the cre­ator of the sec­ular and anti­cler­ical Nahda, this renais­sance of lan­guage, lit­er­a­ture, and the polit­ical and social thought of a new, modern Arab world, lib­er­ated from both the yoke of the Ottomans and the beliefs and pro­hi­bi­tions of scle­rotic and feudal reli­gions and soci­eties.