Refugees fear being sent back to Syria
Resettling unsafe, rights groups say
BEIRUT — Early one recent morning, Lebanese soldiers swept through the Bourj Hammoud neighborhood in Beirut, emptying two buildings of the Syrian refugees living in them. They forced them into trucks and drove them to a no-man’s land near the Lebanese and Syrian border.
After days stuck along the border, hundreds of refugees were taken by Syrian forces back to Syria. Among them was Rasha, a 34-year-old mother of three who fled the country in 2011. The family spent their first night back in Syria sleeping on the streets of Damascus. The next day, she said, she paid a smuggler to help them cross back into Lebanon.
If the soldiers ever come back, Rasha vowed, she would die before being forced back to Syria again.
“Even if they shoot me, I won’t go back,” she said after returning to her home in Beirut.
Across the Middle East, Syrian refugees like Rasha who fled by the millions during their country’s 12-year war have watched nervously as the Arab world reestablishes diplomatic relations with their country’s authoritarian leader, President Bashar Assad, after more than a decade of isolation in the Middle East and beyond.
Last month, Assad attended the annual Arab League summit for the first time in 13 years, and many countries welcoming him back into the fold have made the return of Syrian refugees a top priority.
“We are all interested in Syrian refugees being able to return safely to their homes,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said. “We will work with the government in Damascus to make that possible.”
Despite the assurances of safe returns to Syria by countries sheltering refugees, human rights groups have said it is not safe for them to return, and some of those who have done so faced arbitrary detention, disappearance, torture, and even extrajudicial executions.
More than 6 million Syrians fled during the conflict that began in 2011, most settling in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. For many, the restoration of diplomatic relations with the Syrian government holds out the terrifying prospect of losing safe havens and being forced to abandon the lives they have painstakingly built.
Rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have warned for years of the dangers of sending Syrians home, especially to areas under government control where those who fled mandatory military conscription or who have spoken out against the regime risk disappearing into a notorious prison system where torture and killings are rife.