We Are The Revolution

How rising discontent back home is bringing the Lebanese diaspora together.

 From the country’s north in the city of Tripoli to its south in Beirut, Lebanon’s streets are flooded. Footpaths and roads are closed, with the country’s flags waving high and citizens calling for the government to resign. This is a country starting its own fight against a governing body rife with corruption since the early 90s. It’s politics known for vote buying and negotiated bribery with power cuts, economic meltdown and rubbish mismanagement issues at its core.

 It’s a movement demanding change and a movement that hasn’t been limited to borders. Instead, it’s turned typically suburban West London streets into shows of support for a revolution 3,844 kilometres away. 

The diaspora shout, “The people demand the fall of the regime”, a chant distinctive from the 2011 Arab Spring, that now holds new weight as the Lebanese diaspora stand united with those back home.  

“I’m very passionate about it [the revolution] and so many people are finally realising these politicians they’ve been electing over and over again are not doing anything for the country,” says Elissa Seebaaly, a second year International Development student at King’s College London.

 The 20-year-old moved to London in 2017 following a relocation of her dad’s job to the U.K. Whilst originally wanting to pursue University in Lebanon, her family ties eventually drew her to study at Kings, but that has in no way stopped her from embracing her Lebanese identity.

A country consumed by civil war from 1975 to 1990 produced a system of identity politics and a subsequent secretariat structure due to it’s religious power division between Christians and the Sunni’s and Shia’s (two distinctions within Islam).

In late 2019, the government proposed a tax on WhatsApp, the country’s main method of telecommunications, and the final straw for many in an already growing discontent for the government. “It was just crazy, for £20 in Lebanon [on a phone plan], it would be maximum five GB of data with no calls or text,” explains Elissa.

She emphasises the importance that WhatsApp, as a free texting app, has as a means to avoid extortionate prices of normal phone plans within the country. And that is when something special happened. 

Regardless of anyone’s previous political or religious standing, large groups began to form on roads, marking the beginning of protests calling for a rebuild of a system failing to deliver. Simultaneously, a sense of community was being created among all Lebanese, one never seen before since the end of the civil war.  

“[When the protests began] I messaged all my friends in London saying I don’t care what you believe in or if you really care about Lebanon or not, we have to do something [in London] because what is happening back home is a legitimate issue,” says Elissa.

It is an attitude that also resonated with Jaad Habib, a Brussels born but Lebanese raised engineer, and a complete stranger to Elissa before the revolution began.

 “People were just following their leaders blindly…with parties not really standing up for particular policies anymore, more just [religious] communities,” explains the 26-year-old.

While both moved to the U.K. to study and pursue drastically different career paths, they were both met with feelings of not necessarily having a strong Lebanese diaspora to turn to when planting their roots in London.

 “Before [the revolution] I didn’t really know any other Lebanese in London but now there’s hundreds of us and we’ve got to know each other well,” says Jaad, with Elissa adding that she only really knew the diaspora community as the student community prior to the beginning of the protests.

 “My friend texted me the day after the protests in Lebanon to say we should do a protest on that upcoming Sunday. We texted all our friends, we created heaps of group chats and added everyone we really knew that we thought should be interested.”

“It’s such a massive world-wide movement, it sent a message to the people in power that we aren’t giving up.”

Lebanese native, was setting up her own group in London to show solidarity with the revolution back home.

“I woke up the next day [after the first protest in Lebanon] and decided that we had to do something in London and ended up forming a WhatsApp group with a few friends that I’d known from my Undergraduate days,” she explains. 

 The two young women eventually crossed paths when they all congregated in the home of one of the girls from the WhatsApp group, staying up to three in the morning making posters for the following day’s protest.

“We all just clicked as if we’d known each other for ages, it was amazing!” Elissa mentions, while confessing at the same time that she didn’t really expect a lot of people to come to the first protests.

 “People can usually quite ‘eh’ about Lebanon,” she explains, elaborating that it’s not unusual for a diaspora to be out of touch with all things Lebanese.

First moving to Dubai to attend High School in 2013, along with the estimated 80,000 Lebanese living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the 20-year-old describes that feelings of the diaspora towards Lebanon were not always positive, attributing it to a generational issue. “It was mostly down to the parent’s upbringing because a lot left in the beginning of the 2000s or even right after the war, so they didn’t want anything to do with Lebanon because they lost a lot,” she says.

However, unexpectedly, the small number of attendees predicted expanded into a crowd of more than 3000, causing roads to be shut down and Diana describing it as nothing she’d ever seen before.

“People were just with the Lebanese Flag and not with their political or religious party affiliation, making it feel really special and that this is really our chance to create change,” she explains. From London to Sydney, the diaspora’s protests are not just a means to keep the momentum going and for their messages to be heard globally but to show that whilst they are not there physically, they support and are with the home population every step of the way.   

 “It’s such a massive world-wide movement, it sent a message to the people in power that we aren’t giving up, that we haven’t forgotten about our country and that we are unhappy about the situation too,” Jaad voices.  

Certain members of the diaspora, including Diana, have set up ‘Impact Lebanon’, an organisation aimed at becoming the forefront of not just the London diaspora, but the British diaspora too. Through organising seminars, talks, events to educate those on what’s going on in Lebanon, they hope it will be a platform to get into any further advocacy or lobbying work to aid the revolution. 

Due to the collapse of the country’s banking system, Jaad explains that sending remittances to those back home is a challenging task and fundraisers have been set up to cover very specific gaps in funding like hospitals needing more health kits and general fundraising for educational services. “It’s really down to the diaspora because the Lebanese Pound is losing its value and there’s limits on how much you can withdraw per week. So, people are really just trying to get the bare minimum to survive really,” he explains. 

 As a group they’ve set up an Instagram, @impact.lebanon, that details and promotes all events that the organisation is putting on to not only strengthen the movement within the London diaspora but to also aid in support for those back in Lebanon itself.

Misha Keverian, 20, previously a student of Nutrition at Saint Mary’s University in Twickenham, transferred her studies to the American University of Beirut back in 2018. Admiring the Lebanese diaspora in London via social media, she messages back and forth on Instagram describing her immense pride in the community.

“The multiple protests that took place in London invoked such joy within me. It really showed me that our voices in Lebanon were being heard through all the distance, and more importantly that all Lebanese stood in solidarity for a unified consensual message,” she types, elaborating that the movement has made her feel proud to be a Lebanese Woman and closer to her cultural heritage.

The feeling of belonging in an identity previously rife with conflict and a complicated history is something embraced by all within the Lebanese diaspora, particularly those in London. Elissa, Jaad and Diana’s experiences touch the surface of a growing community born out of a system of corruption that originally divided their nation’s people based on religious lines.

“Really it’s a long-term revolution that’s going to be a hard journey for the next couple of years, but I want people to really regain the hope that in the future they will have the power to do something,” says Diana. 

 The journey of solidarity that the London diaspora has with those in Lebanon, like Misha, is important not only for assisting in a momentum demanding change but to support and unite all Lebanese together.

Image Credit: Karen Ftouni