Lebanese protesters just want the government to remove trash from the streets

Lebanon garbage
(Image credit: Joelle Hatem/Twitter)

Lebanese citizens took to the streets of Beirut on Saturday and Sunday to call for a fairly simple thing: trash removal. Garbage has been piling up in the streets since July, when protesters blocked the entrance to the nation's biggest landfill, which has exceeded its capacity.

See more

"If we don't die from a bullet we will die from cancer from the trash smell," one protester in the "you stink" campaign told The New York Times.

Lebanese lawmakers have been at odds with each other to the point of what the Times calls "political paralysis," unable to even agree on a new president since May 2014, when the last leader's term expired.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Prime Minister Tammam Salam is defending the rights of the protesters, whom cops have tear-gassed, and threatening to resign, which would likely add a new layer to the country's severe political turmoil.

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.