Beirut’s “You Stink” Movement: A Tongue in Cheek Slogan to Hold Officials Accountable

Arabic version: حركة “طلعت ريحتكم” في بيروت: شعار ساخر لمحاسبة المسؤولين

In the summer of 2015, the streets in Beirut, Lebanon, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, looked like an open large landfill. Solid waste management in the city had always been a problem for many reasons, but mainly because of the corruption of its officials. While waste management had been a decades long ongoing crisis, the situation reached an apex in 2015 when residents of towns adjacent to Lebanon’s biggest landfill began experiencing serious health problems, resulting in complete closure of the site and its operations. Concerned Lebanese activists began protesting and posting footage and videos showing tons of household waste littering roads, river banks and shorelines to highlight the extent of the crisis. The simple title they chose for their campaign highlighted the link between the garbage problem and the corruption of their politicians. The title they chose was طلعت ريحتكم– (talaeat ryhatukum) which means “You Stink” in English. 

In the Arabic language the word for corruption is فساد  (Fassad), and this is the same word the Arab speakers use for spoiled food that has sharp, bad, and trash–like smell. The adoption of this clever title for the campaign attracted more protesters, and more than 20,000 Lebanese took to the streets in few days.  

In the Arabic language the word for corruption is فساد  (Fassad), and this is the same word the Arab speakers use for spoiled food that has sharp, bad, and trash–like smell. The adoption of this clever title for the campaign attracted more protesters, and more than 20,000 Lebanese took to the streets in few days. 

The campaign also used banners to reinforce this link between the garbage crisis and the widespread corruption among Lebanese politicians. One of the banners had photos of all the allegedly corrupt politicians with the header, “SOME TRASH SHOULD NOT BE RECYCLED“. Another banner read “CLEAN UP THE TRASH IN THE PARLIAMENT.” In a country that was torn by a civil war and whose political system is sectarian at its base, the campaign was the nation’s first non-sectarian movement in decades.  

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The campaign was short lived since it did not have clear asks at this time, and the government adopted some other unsustainable measures to temporarily solve the trash problem in Beirut’s streets. However, the accessible language pioneered by Beirut’s You Stink movement of 2015 provided entryways for mass mobilization in the ongoing nationwide anti-corruption protests that erupted in late 2019.