Sep. 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –
A Lebanese woman broke into a bank in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Wednesday with a toy gun to demand that the entity hand over her savings, arguing that she needs them to pay for cancer treatment for a family member, given the blockade on withdrawal of funds from banking entities in the country.
The woman, an activist identified as Sali Hafez, has entered one of the Sodeco branches in the capital, taking several of those present hostage and threatening to set herself on fire if the bank refused to return her savings to pay for the treatment. his sister, as reported by the Lebanese state news agency, NNA.
Hafez has broadcast his actions through the social network Facebook, where it can be seen how he asks the bank to return his money to pay for the treatment of his sister, “who has cancer and dies in the hospital.” “I am here to claim my rights,” she says in the video. After that, she has fled through a hole in a glass wall.
Subsequently, the woman has reported to the Lebanese press that she has recovered between 13,000 and 20,000 dollars that her family had deposited in the bank. Eyewitnesses quoted by the newspaper ‘L’Orient le Jour’ have assured that the activist has even doused herself with fuel, threatening to set herself on fire if her demands were not accepted.
The woman has been accompanied during the act by dozens of activists, in an event that took place hours before another man broke into another Lebanese bank in Aley to demand the delivery of his savings. The man has been arrested, without further details about the incident having been released at the moment.
Also, on August 11, an armed man detained several employees and clients of a bank in Beirut for hours to try to withdraw all of their savings. The man, who was finally arrested, received the support of dozens of people who mobilized around the bank as a gesture of solidarity.
Since 2019, Lebanese banks have imposed harsh restrictions on the withdrawal of foreign currency in the face of the serious economic crisis in the country, which has caused on paper an impediment for many people to withdraw their savings, at a time when nearly three quarters of the population have fallen below the poverty line.
The country has been mired in a serious crisis for years, a situation deepened by the explosions of August 2020 in the port of the capital, Beirut, the coronavirus pandemic and the situation at the political level, with tensions that have paralyzed the Government for months.
In addition, the Lebanese pound has been collapsing in recent months, in a crisis that led the World Bank to state in June 2021 that the latter is one of the worst recorded globally since the mid-19th century, with a drastic drop in close to 40 percent of GDP per capita since 2018.
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