2021-08-05 11:10:41
One year after the Beirut port explosion, a new Human Rights Watch report implicates senior Lebanese officials in the disaster that killed 218 people, wounded 7,000 others and destroyed vast swaths of the city.
The blast on August 4, 2020, was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. It resulted from the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, which had been sitting in a hangar at the port for years while multiple government officials who knew about the highly explosive chemicals did nothing.
“We didn’t find any Lebanese official who took any responsibility for securing the port and removing the ammonium nitrate,” says Human Rights Watch researcher Aya Majzoub.
“The levels of corruption and negligence that we found through this documentation was really just shocking.”
DN also speaks with Nisreen Salti, economics professor at the American University of Beirut, who says the port explosion is part of a decades-long pattern of “negligence and corruption and collapse” in Lebanon.
“What the port explosion has done, instead of being a turning point or a moment of reckoning, has just pushed us further into the abyss of total economic freefall.”
Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. lOur reporting includes breaking daily news headlines and in-depth interviews with people on the front lines of the world’s most pressing issues.
On DN!, you’ll hear a diversity of voices speaking for themselves, providing a unique and sometimes provocative perspective on global events.
Missed an episode? Check out DN on FSTV VOD anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips.
#FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.
#FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling, and online at freespeech.org.