Collective Action

Protesters entered and vandalized the Ministry of Energy and Water on Friday, where they tore down and ripped up a portrait of Lebanese president Michel Aoun to protest increasingly frequent power cuts, videos circulating on social media showed.

The video taken by one of the entrants in the ministry and reposted by numerous pages affiliated with the October 2019 uprising shows the torn portrait of the president while other protesters can be heard yelling off-screen. Another video shows a verbal altercation between protesters and someone who appears to be an employee of the ministry. Other videos of the incident show prolific graffiti-writing by the protesters who altered the Ministry sign so it read “Ministry of no Energy and no Water,” which was re-written on the interior walls along with other anti-establishment slogans. In one video, “the drunk minister” can be seen written on one of the ministry’s doors. On the eve of the break-in, a video circulating on social media showed Energy Minister Walid Fayyad during a night out.

Five of the protesters were summoned by State Security for participating in this protest.