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| Justice and Spirituality Association – March 14, 2006. |
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| To uncover the truth, to help the media in their mission and their right of access to the news, and to propagate what took place on March 14, 2006 in the hearing regarding Nadia Yassine’s trial, we have issued the following press release: |
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| We attended the hearing to defend freedom of opinion and show solidarity with the freedom of press. |
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| We attended the hearing even though we had not been summoned nor informed, as is prescribed by the law of which they brazenly pretend to be the protectors and guarantors. |
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| We attended the hearing to uncover the truth of this trial: a political trial to which they have tried to give a legal guise, a trial of opinion par excellence which reminds us of the Inquisition Trials that confiscated people’s beliefs and opinions. |
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| We attended the hearing to unmask the reality of the loudmouthed slogans alleging fallaciously to observe the law and respect human rights as known internationally. |
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| We attended the hearing to further exacerbate their predicament. |
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| We attended the hearing to confirm that the trial was a serious blunder they had committed. They were wrong when they decided to prosecute Nadia Yassine, they were wrong when they decided to fix a date for the hearing, they were wrong when they decided to defer it until further notice, they were wrong when they decided to fix a new date for the hearing. They will not cease to commit blunders and perhaps, one day, they will discover that this trial is none but another tragicomedy of the regime that is added to the other tragicomedies it clumsily plays in all the political, social and economic fields. |
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| We attended the hearing to confirm that we will hold fast to our stances, that we are in harmony with our principles and that we are confident of the soundness of our arguments. |
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| We attended the hearing in thousands – a symbolic number, indeed – to confirm that we hold fast to our right to freedom of expression – without any restrictions or red lines – and that we will not be intimidated by menaces. We have chosen to put a red-crossed gag on our mouths, which we have deemed as a most befitting expression that bespeaks of a reality that muzzles outspoken voices and free opinion, and that prosecutes newspapers. |
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| We attended the hearing to confirm that we are against injustice and despotism whatever may be their size and source. |
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| After the hearing has been adjourned until further notice, we inform public opinion of what follows: |
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| 1- We confirm that the trial is a political one par excellence: it is the trial of a communitarian project championed by a movement that refuses to yield submissively to a forged fait accompli.2- We confirm that such trials will never divert us from the line we devised a couple of decades ago and we have been adhering to ever since.3- We confirm our defense of public liberties in this country and condemnation of all sorts of prosecutions of the freedom of opinion and the press that aim to muzzle outspoken voices and muffle free consciences. |
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| In this regard, God – Exalted be He – says: “And We wish to be Gracious to those who were being depressed in the land and to make them leaders and make them heirs”. Chapter 28, Verse 5. |
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