Representative Ashraf Rifi entered the debate that accompanied the discussion of the general amnesty law in the House of Representatives, rejecting what he described as attempts to entangle the Sunni community with the Lebanese army, and stressing that the Sunnis were and still are at the forefront of those who sacrificed martyrs in the ranks of the military establishment.
Rifi said, in a post on the “X” platform, that “during the general amnesty debate in the House of Representatives, some resorted to a cheap and dangerous game, by trying to create tension between the Sunni sect and the Lebanese army, and falsely promoting that the army’s martyrs were mostly killed by the Sunnis.”
He considered that these proposals constitute, as he put it, “a miserable attempt to falsify history and trade in the blood of the martyrs,” stressing that “Sunni Akkar is the reservoir of the Lebanese army, and the Sunnis were and still are at the forefront of those who presented martyrs in its ranks.”
Rifi cited the Nahr al-Bared battle, pointing out that the army lost 171 martyrs during it, and said that the people of Akkar and the north were at the forefront of those who fell in the ranks of the military establishment.
He stressed that “the Sunni project in Lebanon is the state, not the state, the national army and the legitimate security services, not weapons outside the state,” adding: “Whoever wants the state should not be confronting its army, and whoever respects the martyrs should not use their blood for sectarian incitement.”
Rifi believed that the attempt to strike the relationship between the Sunnis and the army “failed miserably,” considering that the incitement turned against its supporters. He said: “They failed to strike the Sunnis with the army, and fell into the evil of what they had planned.”
He stressed that “the Sunnis, the army and the state are in one trench,” stressing that the attempts of what he described as “the owners of mini-state projects” will not succeed in striking this relationship.
At the conclusion of his post, Rifi recalled the case of the martyr Major Samer Hanna, considering that “the army’s true enemy is the one who executed the heroic martyr Major Samer Hanna and who obliterated and is obliterating the investigation into his execution,” as he put it.
Rifi’s position comes after intense debates witnessed by the House of Representatives during the discussion of the general amnesty law, especially regarding the groups that benefit from it and the files related to detainees and those convicted in security cases. The parliamentary debate overlapped with positions that addressed the relationship of some Lebanese environments with the military establishment and the blood of its martyrs, which prompted a number of representatives to respond and confirm their refusal to turn the amnesty file into a sectarian confrontation or into a subject for debate about the army and its role.
