Syrian refugees told they can no longer live in Denmark

DENMARK has stripped more than 100 Syrian refugees of their residency permits after deciding Damascus and surrounding regions are safe to return to.

Mattias Tesfaye, its immigration minister, insisted last month that Denmark had been “open and honest from the start” with refugees coming from Syria.

“We have made it clear to the Syrian refugees that their residence permit is temporary. It can be withdrawn if protection is no longer needed,” he said as his ministry extended the parts of Syria considered safe to include the southern Rif Dimashq Governorate.

“We must give people protection for as long as it is needed. But when conditions in the home country improve, a former refugee should return home and re-establish a life there.”

Denmark’s ruling centre-left Social Democratic Party has adopted a fierce anti-immigration stance in an attempt to ward off challenges from the Right. Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister, promised to aim for “zero” asylum seekers applying for residence.

Germany has ruled that criminal refugees can be deported to Syria, but Denmark is the first European country to say that ordinary refugees can be sent back. The decision on the Rif Dimashq area will mean 350 Syrian residents in Denmark will have their temporary protection permits reassessed, on top of the roughly 900 from around Damascus who had their cases reopened last year.

By mid-january, 94 Syrians from the Damascus area living in Denmark had lost their permits. Denmark’s Refugee

‘When conditions in the home country improve, a refugee should return home and re-establish a life there’

Appeals Board ruled in December 2019 that conditions in Damascus were no longer sufficiently dangerous to give grounds for temporary protection, without any additional personal reason for asylum.

Michala Bendixen, from the Refugees Welcome rights group, said that Syrians in Denmark now faced “a very, very tragic situation”, forced out of their homes, jobs or studies and into the country’s deportation camps, where they face years in limbo.

“The government hopes that they will go voluntarily, that they will just give up and go on their own,” she said.