Nour Rida

It is the benevolent martyrs who gave generously to protect the land and the people, and left us memories we cannot forget or ignore. Paying tribute to the fleet of the honored Islamic Resistance martyrs, and lest we forget...the "Revival of Resistant Heritage Association" inaugurated the new Martyrs' Relics Preservation Center in The Beirut Southern Suburb in Madi square.
 
It is a center entitled to gathering the resumés and different relics of the martyrs. Not only that but it also entitled to become a specialized center that gathers the verbal and written history and heritage of the great martyrs, not to mention it aims at establishing an organized and documented information bank based on the latest developed techniques.

In an interview with Al Intiqad website, Head of the center Sheikh Moussa Daher explained that the very beginning of the center was in 2002, and took its formal shape in 2004.
"The work mechanism is based on gathering the resumés of the blessed martyrs through conducting interviews with the families, relatives, and friends of the martyrs," Sheikh Daher said, further explaining "the relics might be written, artifacts (military suits, equipment), audio, visual, or in the form of narrated stories."

In this context, Sheikh Daher pointed out the diversity among the martyrs, especially that many of them wrote dairies, poetry, lamentations, or even some art works.
Two years ago, Sheikh Daher had told us that the old center's characteristics impeded its work. With the new well-equipped and spacious center enough to hold within it a full team as well as field representatives, the project saw light.

One outstanding point, Sheih Daher underscored was that the idea of gathering and collecting the heritage and relics of the martyrs was the sum of individual efforts, which developed to later come together and establish the Association. He further noted that Hizbullah has been demonstrating this heritage through a group of activities particularly during the recent few years.

According to Sheikh Daher, the center's work, under the supervision of Hizbullah Media Activities Unit, is summarized in four major goals:

1- Historical goal based on gathering all verbal information related to the martyrs, then document it, just like the case is in other countries that witnessed resistance movements.
2- Informatory goal, sheds light on these relics scientifically and artistically, whether this relic was a document, a book, a story, a cinematic film accordingly with conditions and requirements.
3- Mobiliztional goal, aims at awakening the people and societies, particularly that of the resistance, and attract other far societies.
4- Cultural goal, contributes in transmitting the culture of martyrdom and martyr to those following this path.

Concerning the projects, Sheikh Daher clarified that the center has already published two books entitled "Short words" on words of Sayyed Abbas Moussaiw and Sheikh Ragheb Harb, (leaders of martyrs and resistance fighters) while an inclusive encyclopedia is being printed, which includes the speeches of Sayyed Moussawi and Sheikh Harb. The speeches published, according to Sheikh Daher, focus on the "major political and cultural issues".

"The center also looks forward to publish an official document on the Islamic Resistance martyrs, which reflects to the coming generations, the reality of the phase the hero martyrs lived," Sheikh Daher explained, adding that "among other projects, the center is collecting live testimonies on the martyr Um Yasser, Sayyed Abbas and Sheikh Ragheb, producing 4 documentaries and a film on the biography of a prominent martyr which will be disclosed in two years time. This also while the center's website will be witnessing developments and enhancements."

Sheikh Daher also detailed how currently, the center works on organizing tremendous numbers of information collected on the martyrs. In this context, he said that the center succeeded in gathering more than 8000 actual relics and 10000 written relics. But the main strategy including all the aforementioned information, Sheikh Daher said, remains to be the establishment of an information bank, of international criteria on the preservation and retrieval of information.