March 22, 2010 - NowLebanon - Mothers’ search on Mother’s Day

Mothers demand to know what happened to their children
Hayeon Lee

Um Ahmad sat wearily near the small tent, holding a laminated picture of her son. The 78-year old, a Palestinian refugee living in the Sabra camp, has not seen her son, Ahmad al-Sharkawi, since he disappeared in late 1986. “He was kidnapped from Ramlet al-Baida and taken to the Amal Movement prison in Bourj al-Murr,” Um Ahmad told NOW Lebanon. “I searched all of Beirut to know where he was killed and buried. There was no trace of him in [the] Aanjar [mass graves]. I found his name in Syria with the military investigation unit in Tadmur. But [the authorities] admitted that he’s serving a life sentence.”

This Sunday, Um Ahmad was one of hundreds of mothers who gathered in front of the UN building in downtown Beirut holding up pictures of their lost sons in one hand and flowers in the other. They were protesting, with the help of Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), against the government’s inaction to locate and bring back the Lebanese who disappeared during the civil war and who may be languishing in Syrian prisons. While Mother’s Day is usually an occasion to celebrate the toils and joys of motherhood, for these women it is a day of mourning.

According to SOLIDE, around 17,000 Lebanese vanished between 1975 and 2005 as a result of systematic arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance. SOLIDE focuses particularly on the violations of the Syrian army and is currently pushing for the formation of an international investigation commission to look into the disappearances. It is also demanding that authorities establish a DNA database for all the families of the disappeared and exhume all mass graves in Lebanon.

“Why are these mass graves used as an alibi by politicians to show that the civil war has ended and there are no people missing?” said Wadad Halawani, head of the Committee of the Kidnapped and Missing in Lebanon, whose husband disappeared in September 1982. “Why are we asked to admit that our loved ones are dead?”

In the opening speech of the protest, Ghazi Aad, who founded SOLIDE in 1990, pointed to the tent that the organization erected five years ago which various mothers in waiting have occupied ever since. “After all this agony, the problem has still not been solved. I tell all politicians, ‘Shame on you to claim that you are interested in this cause, as long as this tent stands.’ This is clear proof that you are not serious… Several mothers are dying,” he told the crowd.

Halawani, during her speech, spoke of how the government only investigates the disappearances of some Lebanese. Mentioning Lebanon’s most recent decision not to attend the Arab League Summit this month in Libya because of Imam Moussa Sadr’s disappearance there in 1978, she said, “Is it possible that Lebanon rejected an invitation… just because Libya is hosting and one person is missing there? But we are forging good relations with Syria without considering the many people who are missing.”

Following more statements from mothers and activists, letter-readings and a choir performance of songs by Albert Cherfane, who also disappeared during the war, two chocolate cakes with “Bonne Fête, Maman” written in white frosting were brought to the middle of the gathering.

Old and fragile, Um Ahmad robotically took bites from a piece of the Mother’s Day cake as she spoke. She is all alone; not only did she lose her son Ahmad and her husband during the war, her three other children are also dead. “I can’t walk, I have heart failure,” she said. “The doctors try to comfort me and try to treat my bent back but to no avail. Even my heart medication is not helping because I’m handicapped by grief.”

“I have nobody else but God and [Ahmad]. I implore God that I see him before I die… I implore God to see him, even if he’s dead. I want his body. His father is buried in the Palestinian martyrs’ cemetery. If they give me back his body, I’ll open up his father’s grave and bury them next to one another.”