The street outside Om Bar Room in Mar Mikhael, Beirut, in the aftermath of Wednesday night's incident. (Credit: L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — A group of men have attacked an LGBTQ+-friendly bar, reportedly hurling insults and preventing some patrons inside from leaving. There are also some unconfirmed reports of people being injured.
It happened at Om Bar in Beirut’s Mar Mikhael neighborhood on Wednesday evening. Lebanese rights group, Helem, citing eyewitnesses, has linked the incident to the small Christian extremist faction Jnoud al-Rab ("Soldiers of God”). L’Orient Today has not been able to confirm this.
According to a bar employee who spoke to L'Orient Today, the venue had been hosting a drag event Wednesday night. The employee said that there were no injuries.
"Jnoud al-Rab attacked the venue and held everyone hostage and refused to let people out...it was a good hour, more than an hour," Tarek Zeidan, executive director of the Helem LGBTQ+ rights organization, told L'Orient Today. OT could not immediately confirm the identity of the attackers.
A L'Orient Today reporter who arrived on the scene at midnight found two police cars that had responded to the incident present, alongside a number of shaken patrons, passersby and bar staff.
"Several people who tried to escape were physically attacked and we are documenting those injuries as we speak," Zeidan added, saying he had gathered testimony from those present at the scene.
One bystander who had been in the bar when the incident began around 11 p.m. expressed fear over the situation to a L'Orient Today reporter on the scene.
In videos reportedly of the Wednesday incident circulating on social media, men can be heard shouting, "“This is Satan’s place, it’s promoting homosexuality… on the land of the lord this is prohibited … now we are only having a conversation with you … we have warned you 100 times … this is only the beginning.” L'Orient Today could not immediately verify the footage.
In recent months, there have been similar attacks by Jnoud al-Rab.
Wednesday night's incident is an indication "of just how lawless and serious the situation in Lebanon has become...of how far this entire regime is willing to scapegoat this community," Zeidan said.
Caretaker Minister of Culture, Mohammad Mortada, posted on X Thursday afternoon that he “did not have details” regarding the attack on the bar.
“If the bar was really hosting a show promoting homosexuality, why didn't the security services stop the performance, hold accountable those who authorized it and close the bar?” he posted.
In mid-August, the caretaker Minister announced signing a draft law to combat “the promotion of sexual perversion.”
This move came a few weeks after a proposed law was signed in July by nine deputies with the aim of repealing the article of the penal code criminalizing “unnatural acts,” alluding to same-sex relationships.