NNA - A number of human rights and women's organizations staged a sit-in in Downtown Beirut/Martyrs' Square to protest continued withholding of nationality from spouses and offspring of women of Lebanese extraction. Speakers including women activist Linda Mattar, Ghaniya Doughan, Marie Debs and other feminists defended in their speeches Lebanese women's right of granting nationality to their husbands and offspring. They also criticized the ministerial committee's decision to block women's bequeathing of Lebanese nationality to their offspring.
Civil and community service activists, women and their non-Lebanese husbands and children also partook in the demonstration with security forces keeping a watchful eye on them. The event passed off peacefully.
=====================G.G./R.K.