Courage Acceptance Speech -- May Chidiac

Courage Acceptance Speech -- May Chidiac

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I still remember every single detail of the explosion that almost killed me: the sound of the blast, the heat of the smoke, the taste of blood in my mouth. On this particular day, some cold-blooded criminals decided to eliminate me, but I survived, and it is not a secret anymore that my survival was a miracle.

"I will drink from your blood.”

Those words that I will never forget were said by a Syrian officer.

One year after the agression, I am more convinced that the agressors wanted to eliminate me, for I have spoken my mind, for I believed in a free democratic Lebanon, for I never asked myself, as President Kennedy once said, what my country can do for me but what I can do for my country, and I did much.

Yes, I lost my left hand. Yes , I lost my left leg. I have burns. I lived nine month in hospitals. I had 26 surgeries.

Moreover, I gave my country a hand to fight with, and a leg to kick all the enemies with, and they are not few.

The worst is that I can assure you that even now I am still threatened, but I kept on doing my job with no fear, ready for any danger I might face.

Regimes are trying even after their visible withdrawal from Lebanon, to prevent me, and others, from telling the world the truth about what is happening in my country and to my fellow Lebanese.

In journalism, courage means to speak loudly, to take risks. But in Lebanon, and especially since 2005, it means to get killed in an awful way, like what happened to Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueni, or to be forced to live with protheses or on a wheelchair, as what has occurred for me. They were afraid of our influence on the youth, the young generation. They wanted to forbid us from guiding them, building up their minds, teaching themhow to love their country.

There has been no prior precedent of a female journlaist being targeted in such a way through Lebanon’s bloody history of political assasinations. Unfortunately, these so-called people used to follow mafia-style rules where women and children were excluded. But there’s always a first time for everything, and danger was just around the cornder, and I was chosen to be the pioneer of women in Lebanese political assasination attempts. Maybe just to add some décor around the pictures of the dead and living martyrs, or maybe they just believed that a qoman in a patriarchal society is starting to have too much of an influence on the people and needed to be quieted.

The problem actually is that the serial bomber is at large again, and his target now is to kill our resolve to have a U.N. tribunal to persecute the killers of our leaders and opinion writers, including myself, to kill our hope to achieve justice and create a true democracy in a multi-sect Lebanon that lives in peace, prosperty and equality under the rule of Law.

I have heard some whisperings abou the Bramertz report, saying that it will not give names, that compromises will be done to save some people and some regimes. This makes us worry, myself and my family and the families of the victimes of the 14 other attacks, who are relying on this report. So it must find its way to court.

Private armies still flourish in my country. They take miscalculated measures on behalf of all Lebanese, disregarding Lebanon’s interest, and our government refers to them as “the Resistance” because they have pledged to “liberate” a tiny piece of terrain called the Shebaa farms in southeast Lebanon, which was controlled by Syria when Israel occupied it in 1976.

If Syria recognizes Shebaa farms as Lebanese territory, and if Israel hands over control of the terrain to the United Nations, our “resistance” will lose the pretext of maintaining weapons provided by Syria and Iran to settle their regional affairs using Lebanese territory. And since I am talking about regional threats, I cannot but condem the Israeli aggression against Lebanon in July. Depite all the excuses, I cannot tolerate the scene of more than 1,200 persons killed, most of them children, and 4,000 injured and maimed. This scene made me feel the same suffering that I experienced last year and made me wonder what would be their mothers were feeling. It is very painful for any woman to see her child hurt. You can ask my own mother.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Lebanese people are wounded and they need your support. We appreciate what the international community is doing to help us, we appreciate the U.N. Security Council 1701 and the expanded UNFIL, but we are in the dragon’s mouth and we really need help to come out.

Thank you and god bless you all.

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