Member of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), Ayman Al-Asimi, has strongly criticized recent statements made by Gebran Bassil, president of the so-called Free Patriotic Movement, labeling them as an extension of his previous inflammatory remarks. Al-Asimi asserted that these statements express arrogant racist discourse, inciting violence and hatred towards Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Al-Asimi emphasized that the Syrian refugees in Lebanon fled the oppression of the Assad regime and the criminal militias of the terrorist Hezbollah, who are Bassil’s allies in Lebanon, and did not leave their homes, villages, and properties for the sake of imaginary projects that exist only in the mind of Bassil.
Al-Asimi responded to Bassil’s latest allegations made during his speech at the mass honoring the generations of the Lebanese resistance by questioning the “international conspiracy” Bassil spoke of. Al-Asimi highlighted the fact that the percentage of Syrian families benefiting from UN aid in Lebanon decreased by 15 percent after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees removed about 35,000 families from the list of food and financial aid.
Al-Asimi reminded those who have sided with the Assad regime since the start of the Syrian Revolution of freedom and dignity in Syria that the first to pay the price for the criminality of this regime is Lebanon and the Lebanese people themselves.
Al-Asimi called on the Lebanese authorities to carry out their duties in deterring those who make such inflammatory speeches. He also urged the legal authorities and civil society organizations to take legal action against those who make hateful statements, which drive wedges between the two brotherly peoples day and night. (Source: SOC’s Media Department)
