The League of Friends of Kamal Jumblatt organized, on the occasion of the sixteenth of March, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Kamal Jumblatt, and on the occasion of the announcement of the winner of the Kamal Jumblatt Prize for the Protection of the Environment in Lebanon, a large meeting at its centre in Beirut.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of the Environment Mohammad Machnouk; the deputies: Mohammad Kabbani, Henri Helou, Amin Wehbe, Dr Atef Majdalani and Antoine Saad; the former minister Dr Salah Salman; as well as the friends, followers and admirers of Kamal Jumblatt and the friends of the environment in Lebanon.
The meeting was run by Paul Abi Rached, and it was addressed by the League's president Abbas Khalaf and the League's vice-president and head of the committee supervising the Kamal Jumblatt Prize Ghada Jumblatt. There were also speeches of thanks to the League from the prize winners: Dr Mounir Abi Said and the representative of Al-Hadi Institution and its director Ismail Al-Zein.
In his speech Abi Rached affirmed “the importance of the Kamal Jumblatt Prize for the Protection of the Environment in Lebanon, and that those who deserve it are regarded as real heroes on the model of the teacher Kamal Jumblatt, seeking to defend our fundamental rights to life”.
As for Khalaf, he affirmed that “days and years pass, and Kamal Jumblatt and his progressive, secular, democratic and Arabist project remain the road and the solution”, noting that Kamal Jumblatt wanted Lebanon to be a homeland and not a refuge, a lighthouse of thought, creativity and justice in the Arab East, a fertile ground for lofty human values and a centre of creativity and enlightenment - not a centre for the conflicts of regional and international axes at the expense of Lebanon's independence, sovereignty and freedom.
He said: “Kamal Jumblatt dreamed of establishing a new Lebanon: secular, pluralist, progressive, democratic, free of any external attachment. He led a bitter struggle for the sake of reforming the political, economic and social system in Lebanon, and he relied on his struggle record in the fight against corruption, favouritism and petrified reaction. His movement for change took shape with the creation of the Lebanese National Movement, which brought together the national and progressive parties, bodies and figures in a cohesive organizational unity, and he was the leader of its journey and the knight of its struggle. The dream was embodied in a historic document he launched on 18 August 1975 entitled ‘The Transitional Programme for Political Reform'.”
He held that “the dream of Kamal Jumblatt and his companions in the Progressive Socialist Party and the Lebanese National Movement was not an impossible dream, nor a dream unjust to any group; rather it was the dream of redistributing power with balance and justice and of ending an era of domination and tyranny over a broad group of the Lebanese”.
He stressed that “Kamal Jumblatt remained at the level of his cause. He did not bargain over principle, nor did he retreat before threats. The martyr fell while holding fast to his cause, a hero among the heroes of history and a symbol of chivalry, courage and exceptional leadership.” He said: “How much we need him today, to restore some wisdom, balance, uprightness and intellectual integrity to the Lebanese and Arab arena.”
As for Jumblatt, she pointed out that on Jumblatt's anniversary “we remember that what he left of knowledge and of the literature of life has remained immortal after his departure, and most of it was concerned with the human being and with his persistent endeavour to secure better opportunities for his life”.
She explained that the League awards, every two years, a prize for a humane intellectual work that addresses the human values he believed in, and pointed to the launch of the second Kamal Jumblatt Prize in the field of protecting the environment in Lebanon, after the League had launched its first prize for a distinguished activist in the field of human rights in the Arab world, which was won jointly by the activist Ahmad Maher from Egypt and the activist Radhia Nasraoui from Tunisia.
She explained the reasons for choosing the subject of the environment for the prize this year, linking it to the wretched environmental conditions in Lebanon and to the dangers resulting from pollution that threaten the safety and health of the human being in Lebanon.
She praised the broad and varied participation in the nominations for the prize and thanked the participants. She then announced that the committee supervising the prize, after evaluating the participants' files, had decided to divide the prize into two halves: the first half is awarded to a distinguished scientific intellectual accomplishment in the field of the environment and its protection, and it was won by Dr Mounir Abi Said for his scientific and field accomplishments in the field of preserving wildlife and managing biodiversity, and for preparing and applying varied awareness programmes for the different age groups to preserve biodiversity, directed especially at students throughout Lebanon (more than 15 thousand students annually). His scientific research also had a profound effect, helping to change people's attitudes towards wildlife, which was positively reflected in biodiversity. As for the second half of the prize, devoted to a field activity that constitutes an example to be followed by others and that serves the protection of the environment, it was won by Imam Al-Hadi Institution for Hearing and Visual Impairment and Language and Communication Disorders, which belongs to the institutions of Al-Mabarrat Charitable Association in Lebanon. This institution was distinguished by achieving an environmental field accomplishment embodied in its carrying out of the ‘Protect Your Environment' programme, which it applied successfully with people with special needs in environmental education aimed at preparing a virtuous Lebanese environmental citizen who respects the environment, preserves its resources and realizes the effects and harms of its pollution; and which seeks to spread this awareness through these pupils with special needs, their teachers and those working with them, to the parents and to the rest of society's segments, for the sake of prevention from the dangers of environmental pollution to life in general. What Al-Hadi Institution has achieved and continues to pursue constitutes an example that teaching and social institutions can follow so as to spread environmental awareness among the various segments of Lebanese society.
The two winners thanked the League, “the guardian of the thought of Kamal Jumblatt, the friend of the environment in Lebanon”.
