BEIRUT: Lebanon’s economic crisis seems to be getting those studying abroad expelled from colleges like Mohammad Sleiman, who studies medicine at Belarus hoping to become his family’s first doctor.
“I’ve got a future and I’m working toward it,” 23-year-old Sleiman said from his bedroom in the capital Minsk, a dream catcher hanging on the wall behind him.
“But if they throw me out of university, my future will be lost. And it’ll be the Lebanese state’s fault.”
As Lebanese banks forbid depositors from transferring their own money abroad, thousands of students who went abroad to pursue studies they could not afford at home are among the hardest hit.
Students told AFP they had moved into cheaper accommodation, taken on jobs or even cut back on meals.
Some had been forced to fly home to Lebanon, with no idea how to return to their studies.
Sleiman said he was so stressed about money that he could hardly concentrate in class.
Back home, his family’s dollar savings have been trapped in the bank since 2019, and the 23-year-old has no idea how he will pay tuition fees when his father can barely borrow enough to send him rent.
Last month, he says his name appeared on a list with other Lebanese threatened with expulsion if they did not pay up.
Lebanon’s parliament passed a law last year to help students like him, but parents say banks systematically turn them away demanding more paperwork.
In south Lebanon, Sleiman’s father said he had been to several protests by parents demanding help from the Lebanese authorities, but to no avail.
Without access to his savings, 48-year-old Moussa Sleiman has to buy $300 for his son each month on the black market at an exorbitant exchange rate.
But his earnings from his toy and cosmetics store, in Lebanese pounds now worth 85 percent less at street value, cannot even begin to cover it.
“I’ve been so worried,” the father of eight said, with his eldest son’s April rent due.
“I’m going to have to go and rack up more debt.”
One student activist said parents had also sold cars and gold jewelry to help their children.
Many pin blame for Lebanon’s worst financial crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war on political mismanagement and corruption.
As the country’s foreign reserves plummet, and amid reports of mass capital flight despite currency controls since 2019, they accuse the ruling class of having plundered their savings.
A law passed in 2020 is supposed to allow parents to access $10,000 per student enrolled abroad in 2019 at the much cheaper official exchange rate. But parents say the banks don’t care.
“They take our requests and dump them in drawers because there’s no more money left to send. They stole it,” said Sleiman’s father.
A handful of parents or grandparents have filed lawsuits against their banks and won, the latest last month.
One of them was able last year to transfer funds to his sons in France and Spain so they could graduate.
Sleiman and fellow parents are looking into doing the same.
And the International Union of Lebanese Youth, covering students in 20 countries, has started working with volunteer lawyers toward filing dozens more cases.
But lawyer and activist Nizar Sayegh said these cases were still rare and complicated by coronavirus lockdowns and banks filing appeals.
Many families also shy away from legal action for fear the banks would then close their account, he said.
In Italy, 20-year-old Reine Kassis said she and fellow cash-strapped Lebanese flatmates were having to delay breakfast till lunch time.
“We eat toast and cheese, then study, study, study until supper,” said the mechanical engineering student in Ferrara.
She says she has received a little help in Italy.
But her brother, 23, had to return from Ukraine to Lebanon to continue studying online because he could not afford the rent.
Their father Maurice Kassis, a retired officer, said he was heartbroken.
“I only had two children so I could spoil them, and educate them properly,” the 54-year-old said in the eastern town of Zahle.
When he retired, he had enough savings stashed away in Lebanese pounds to cover both of them studying abroad.
But today, with the collapse of the Lebanese currency, those pounds would fetch just an eighth of their old value in dollars.
After he has paid off his home loan with his pension each month, he only has the equivalent of $50 left for the whole family.
“How do you educate your children with that?” he asked.
“I’m telling them to find themselves a future abroad.”
Lebanon’s dollar crisis dims future of students abroad
https://arab.news/cbnst
Lebanon’s dollar crisis dims future of students abroad
- Students told AFP they had moved into cheaper accommodation, taken on jobs or even cut back on meals
- Parents blame banks of dumping their requests to send to children enrolled abroad $10,000, despite law passed in 2020
Saad Hariri pledges to contest May election
- Beirut rally draws large crowds on anniversary of his father’s assassination
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced on Saturday that his movement, which represents the majority of Lebanon’s Sunni community, would take part in upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for May.
The Future Movement had suspended its political activities in 2022.
Hariri was addressing a large gathering of Future Movement supporters as Lebanon marked the 21st anniversary of the assassination of his father and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, at Martyrs’ Square in front of his tomb.
He said his movement remained committed to the approach of “moderation.”
A minute’s silence was observed by the crowd in Martyrs’ Square at the exact time when, in 2005, a suicide truck carrying about 1,000 kg of explosives detonated along Beirut’s seaside road as Rafik Hariri’s motorcade passed, killing him along with 21 others, including members of his security guards and civilians, and injuring 200 people.
Four members of Hezbollah were accused of carrying out the assassination and were tried in absentia by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.
The crowd waved Lebanese flags and banners of the Future Movement as they awaited Saad Hariri, who had returned to Beirut from the UAE, where he resides, specifically to commemorate the anniversary, as has been an annual tradition.
Hariri said that “after 21 years, the supporters of Hariri’s approach are still many,” denouncing the “rumors and intimidation” directed at him.
He added: “Moderation is not hesitation … and patience is not weakness. Rafik Hariri’s project is not a dream that will fade. He was the model of a statesman who believed, until martyrdom, that ‘no one is greater than their country.’ The proof is his enduring place in the minds, hearts and consciences of the Lebanese people.”
Hariri said he chose to withdraw from political life after “it became required that we cover up failure and compromise the state, so we said no and chose to step aside — because politics at the expense of the country’s dignity and the project of the state has no meaning.”
He said: “The Lebanese are weary, and after years of wars, divisions, alignments and armed bastions, they deserve a normal country with one constitution, one army, and one legitimate authority over weapons — because Lebanon is one and will remain one. Notions of division have collapsed in the face of reality, history and geography, and the illusions of annexation and hegemony have fallen with those who pursued them, who ultimately fled.”
Hariri said the Future Movement’s project is “One Lebanon, Lebanon first — a Lebanon that will neither slide back into sectarian strife or internal fighting, nor be allowed to do so.”
He added that the Taif Agreement is “the solution and must be implemented in full,” arguing that “political factions have treated it selectively by demanding only what suits them — leaving the agreement unfulfilled and the country’s crises unresolved.”
He said: “When we call for the full implementation of the Taif Agreement, we mean: weapons exclusively in the hands of the state, administrative decentralization, the abolition of political sectarianism, the establishment of a senate and full implementation of the truce agreement. All of this must be implemented — fully and immediately — so we can overcome our chronic problems and crises together.
“Harirism will continue to support any Arab rapprochement, and reject any Arab discord. Those who seek to sow discord between the Gulf and Arab countries will harm only themselves and their reputation.
“We want to maintain the best possible relations with all Arab countries, starting with our closest neighbor, Syria — the new Syria, the free Syria that has rid itself of the criminal and tyrannical regime that devastated it and Lebanon, and spread its poison in the Arab world.”
Hariri said he saluted “the efforts of unification, stabilization and reconstruction led by Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa.”
When asked about the Future Movement’s participation in parliamentary elections following his withdrawal from politics, he said: “Tell me when parliamentary elections will be held, and I will tell you what the Future Movement will do. I promise you that, when the elections take place, they will hear our voices, and they will count our votes.”
The US Embassy in Lebanon shared a post announcing that Ambassador Michel Issa laid a wreath at the grave of Rafik Hariri.
Hariri’s legacy “to forge peace and prosperity continues to resonate years later with renewed significance,” the embassy said.
