QAB ELIAS, Lebanon (AP) – Amid a deepening economic crisis and political stalemate, Lebanese authorities crack down on Syrian refugees, sparking panic among Syrians in the country.
In recent weeks, the military has raided refugee camps, set up checkpoints to check the documents of non-Lebanese citizens, detained and often deported Syrians found illegal, said refugees and Humanitarian organizations say.
“People don’t sleep at home and they are even afraid to go to work,” said a woman from Syria’s Idlib governorate in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. Her husband was deported along with 28 other men after a raid on Jounieh’s Beirut suburban apartment on April 10, she said, and has not heard from him since.
Like other Syrians interviewed for this article, the woman spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Her 4-year-old son asks every day where his father is. Like many men who have fled to Lebanon, she fears she was sent to one of her Syrian detention camps because her husband was wanted for evading military service.
The pressure has increased in another way. Local governments have introduced restrictive measures such as curfews for Syrians. The interior ministry announced on Tuesday that it had ordered local governments to survey and register Syrian populations and document them before allowing property to be rented.
He also called on the UN refugee agency to withdraw refugee status for Syrians who commute between Lebanon and the war-torn country. Last week, a committee of government ministers asked UNHCR to release detailed personal information on refugees in its database.
About 805,000 registered Syrian refugees live in Lebanon, theoretically protected by official status, but those who do not keep their residency documents up to date face deportation. I’m here. The actual number of Syrians living in Lebanon, fleeing a 12-year civil war, is believed to be much higher since the Lebanese government ordered the United Nations to suspend new registrations in 2015.
Government officials have given various estimates for the number of Syrians in the country, from 1.5 million to her more than 2 million. Lebanon is believed to have a population of around 5 million to 5.5 million citizens, but no census has been held for nearly a century.
Since Lebanon’s economic meltdown began in 2019, officials have increasingly called for a mass return of Syrians, saying they are a burden on the country’s scarce resources and that much of Syria is now safe. The rhetoric has grown increasingly heated; a federation of trade unions recently declared a “National Campaign to Liberate Lebanon from the Syrian Demographic Occupation.”
In recent interviews with local media, caretaker Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar claimed that refugees make up 40% of Lebanon’s population, which “no country in the world would accept.”
Hajjar told The Associated Press that Lebanon’s government can ensure that Syrians who qualify as refugees would not be deported, by exchanging data with the U.N. refugee agency.
He referred questions about deportations to General Security, the agency in charge of enforcing immigration laws. Spokespeople for the agency and the Lebanese military did not respond to requests for comment and neither has made public statement on the deportations. The UN refugee agency said attacks on Syrian communities have increased and it has received reports of deportations of Syrians, including registered refugees. “We take reports of deportations of Syrian refugees very seriously,” she said.
UN officials did not specify the number of confirmed deportations. The Access Center for Human Rights, a group that tracks the situation of Syrian refugees, said it recorded at least 200 cases of deportation in April.
The United States, one of the largest donors to the Lebanese army, has expressed concern about the deportation to Lebanese authorities, said a spokesman for the US embassy in Beirut, who requested anonymity in accordance with regulations. A spokesman said the return of refugees “must be voluntary, safe and dignified”. “I have questions about the procedures used in recent deportations and the extent to which these standards are being met.”
The anti-refugee campaign comes amid a deadlock in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a six-month deadlock in the election of the country’s next president.
Meanwhile, several Arab countries are closing in on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The return of refugees has been on the agenda of recent regional consultations, including a meeting of senior diplomats in Jordan on Monday to discuss a political solution to the Syrian civil war.
Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, says refugees are used as scapegoats by Lebanese politicians at a time of mounting public outrage over Lebanon’s failure to address the economic and political crisis.
Refugees are “like punching bags that show up when everyone needs them,” he said. He suggested the crackdown could also be linked to the ongoing presidential impasse in Lebanon.
