Beirut-born singer Mika all set to livestream concert for blast victims
Beirut-born pop star Mika will livestream a concert this weekend to raise funds for victims of the Aug 4 port blast in the Lebanese capital, and Mexican actress Salma Hayek and Australian singer Kylie Minogue are among those joining in.
Some 190 people were killed and 6,000 injured in the huge explosion that reduced parts of the city to rubble and deepened an economic and political crisis in the country.
“There’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of sadness,” Mika told Reuters in a Zoom interview. “And so I think it’s important to provoke empathy, to show the human side of things, to use music...and just kind of focus on that human side of it for a moment instead of just the politics, which is...what happens most of the time.”
Money raised from the concert, to be streamed on Mika’s YouTube channel via a private link from 1900 GMT today, will go to Save the Children and the Lebanese Red Cross to support their work on the ground in
Beirut. Tickets cost 10 pounds ($12.95). Mika said performers would be filmed in their local surroundings rather than all being inside, giving viewers more variety, and the concert would feature people caught up in the blast.
They include the family of George, who was born in a hospital that bore the full force of the shockwaves but who survived, earning him the nickname “miracle” baby.
Meanwhile, a Lebanonbased consulting company hit by US sanctions said it was surprised by the move and accused Washington of seeking to choke the battered Lebanese economy.
The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on an official from Hezbollah, and two firms based in Lebanon, which is wrestling with an economic crisis.
The US Treasury said those targeted had ties to the heavily armed and politically powerful group.
The measures build on sanctions the United States imposed this month on two former Lebanese government ministers, who it accused of enabling Hezbollah.
“The company is surprised that the American administration accused it of corruption and enriching some individuals at the expense of the Lebanese people,” said Arch Consulting, one of the two firms blacklisted by the Treasury Department.
The statement blamed Washington’s “policy of sanctions and blockade” for Lebanon’s “deteriorating economic conditions”. Lebanon’s economy is collapsing after the nation built up a mountain of debt following its 1975-1990 civil war.
Its banks are paralysed, its currency has crashed and it has defaulted on its sovereign borrowing.
Adding to its problems, a huge port blast in August ripped through Beirut, killing nearly 200 people, injuring thousands of others and causing damage estimated at billions of dollars.
French President Emmanuel Macron called Lebanon’s president yesterday to discuss the need to press on with efforts to form a new government, seeking to give new momentum to France’s initiative to pull the country out of crisis.