BEIRUT - Thousands of people marched in Beirut on Friday behind the coffin of a slain anti-Syrian politician whose assassination this week intensified calls for President Emile Lahoud to step down. Some 10,000 people took part in the sombre funeral procession for George Hawi, a former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party and long-time critic of Syria's role in Lebanon, who was killed on Tuesday when a bomb exploded in his car.Nationalist songs and recordings of Hawi speeches blared from loudspeakers as the crowd, holding up red-white-and-green Lebanese flags and red Communist flags, walked silently behind the hearse as the cortege made its way to a church in central Beirut. Only sporadic chants of "Communist, Communist", were heard.
"Lebanon is like an evergreen tree," Communist mourner Salman Ballout, 55, told Reuters. "George Hawi and others may have died but a new generation is born to carry the message."
| "The Syrians are the irresponsible campers in the forest, throwing cigarette butts all over the place," he added. |