Demanding Justice

"Enough Injustice," reads the poster this woman is carrying during a protest earlier this week demanding the release of alleged islamist fighters who were detained by the army last summer during the Nahr El-Bared crisis.

One of their arguments (from Naharnet (in Arabic)) is that they "see a lot of others who have wronged this country and its people walk free." And on some level, they're might be right. With war criminals being appointed and elected into office, why should these guys have to serve time, especially since they haven't even been tried yet?

But then again, these people aren't Lebanese citizens who got caught up in a civil war and did some bad things to their country and fellow citizens. In fact, a lot of these people aren't Lebanese citizens at all. And they weren't fighting other groups of militants. They were fighting the Lebanese army, which at that point, was one of the few (if not the only) remaining institutions in the country that wasn't paralyzed by politics.

That said, I must note that I agree with these protestors on one thing. These people still deserve justice. They need to be tried, and those that are found guilty sentenced, those that aren't released. We don't want to have our very own Guantanamo Bay.

Going back to the picture... Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a woman, in the burning heat of August, completely covers herself up in black, for no reason other than the fact that she's a woman, and then demands "justice"?

Photo from Tayyar.org