With the caricatures of the Maronite patriarch and the Saudi king that appeared in the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan and on one of Beirut’s roadways, Lebanon’s crisis with the freedom of expression has returned to the fore in a country that claims to be an oasis for freedom in the region.
For more than 20 years, the Lebanese lawmakers who crafted the 1990 constitutional amendments have boasted that its preamble explicitly confirms that the “land of the cedars” is committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that “the government shall embody these principles in all fields and areas without exception.”