Syrian refugees in Lebanon face racism, deportation and torture

On May 2, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Beirut with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides. They were there to seal a $1.07 billion deal with Lebanon’s interim government to support the country’s “socio-economic stability” and curb the illegal migration of Syrian refugees to Cyprus.

The sharp increase in the number of migrants arriving by boat with Syrians has prompted the Cypriot government to temporarily suspend processing all asylum applications from Syrian nationals in mid-April. According to the United Nations, 3,481 Syrians arrived in Cyprus between January and May this year. The vast majority arrived in the country by sea from Turkey, Lebanon and Syria, although a smaller number crossed by land from the Turkish-controlled part of Northern Cyprus.

The renewed refugee crisis in Europe comes as Syrians in Lebanon face growing hostility from both the country’s population and its government.

Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. There are now an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon, according to the government; almost 800,000 are officially registered as refugees with the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR. While some Syrian refugees work in agriculture and construction, nine in 10 “require humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs,” the UNHCR says.

As Lebanon’s economic and political situation has worsened over the past five years, Syrian refugees have become an easy scapegoat for the country’s woes. In recent months, they have faced violence and xenophobia from some Lebanese citizens, as well as arrests, evictions, torture and deportations at the hands of the state.

As a result, Syrian refugees feel trapped between the distant dream of settling in Europe, the inhospitable climate in Lebanon and the fear of deportation to their home country, which could be a death sentence.

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From 2022, Lebanon aims to voluntary repatriation of Syrian refugees, saying large parts of Syria are now safe. The country, which is in the throes of a severe economic crisis, also cited the financial burden of housing so many migrants — although the UNHCR and the EU are providing billions of dollars to help Syrian refugees and vulnerable Lebanese. Syria’s readmission to the Arab League last year also sped up repatriation efforts.

The voluntary process of returning Syrians to Lebanon has been criticized by human rights advocates, as refugees struggle to make informed decisions about returning amid restrictive Lebanese government policies, discrimination, limited access to public services and insufficient information about the current human rights situation in Syria. Beirut previously demanded that the UNHCR stop registering Syrian refugees in 2015 and imposed strict residency rules for Syrians.

Repatriation, however, is not always voluntary; Lebanon’s tougher policies toward Syrian refugees also include forced deportations. The government points to a 2019 decision by the Higher Defense Council, a body that advises the government on national security and defense, that allows Lebanese authorities to repatriate Syrians who illegally entered Lebanon after April 24, 2019.

Deportations have increased significantly in 2023. Deportations, accompanied by documented abuses and discrimination, including arbitrary detention and torture, affected not only Syrians who arrived in Lebanon after April 2019, but also those who arrived earlier and were registered with the UNHCR.

Meanwhile, some EU member states, such as Cyprus and Denmark, are pushing for the EU to consider declaring parts of Syria as safe zones. However, human rights groups such as Amnesty International say such a move would violate the principle of non-refoulement under international law, which prohibits returning refugees to countries where they may be at risk of torture or persecution.

Lebanon has stepped up airstrikes to return Syrian refugees to their country last year, regardless of their legal status. The Lebanese army has deported or sent back at least 13,700 Syrians, up from 1,500 in 2022, according to data provided the foreign policyFrom January to April 2024, Lebanon’s General Security — the agency responsible for foreign affairs and border security — deported at least 301 Syrians, and the Lebanese army deported or sent back at least 1,000 people from northern Lebanon to Syria, according to the same sources. Human rights groups say both organizations are deporting Syrians without following legal procedures.

Tensions over the presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon escalated further in early April when politician Pascal Sleiman, a member of the Christian Lebanese Forces party, was kidnapped and killed. Lebanese forces initially accused Hezbollah of involvement in his death, which Hezbollah denied. Subsequent investigations led to the arrest of seven Syrian nationals who confessed to assaulting Sleiman in a carjacking incident and transporting his body to Syria. In the days following Sleiman’s killing, Lebanese groups attacked Syrian passersby and verbally endangered Syrians, if they had not abandoned Burj Hammoud, a city northeast of Beirut.

Such anti-Syrian sentiment is common in Lebanon. The dynamic was on display in Beirut on June 5, when at least one gunman — a Syrian — opened fire near the U.S. Embassy. In an attempt to prevent escalation toward the Syrians, the U.S. Embassy, ​​through X, implored the public “not to take this incident out of context and use it as a weapon against the refugee community in Lebanon.”

Jad Shahrour, spokesman for the Samir Kassir Foundation, said: the foreign policy that publicly blaming Syrian refugees serves the purposes of politicians. Politicians have “all these tools… ready to launch hate speech campaigns against refugees whenever they feel they need a scapegoat.”

In mid-April, interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced that “most Syrians” from Lebanon would be deported once the international community recognized safe zones in Syria. Issam Sharaf al-Din, Lebanon’s minister for displaced persons, called for the opening of maritime borders to allow Syrian refugees to leave Lebanon by sea and to put pressure on displaced Syrians to return to their country, a position echoed by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Ramzi Kaiss, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: the foreign policy that since July 2023, the organization has documented thousands of collective deportations of Syrians from Lebanon by the Lebanese army, targeting residential areas and tent settlements.

“People registered with the UNHCR have been deported regardless of refugee status, including those who genuinely feared returning to Syria,” he said, citing cases where Lebanese authorities have deported Syrian opposition activists and army deserters, as well as cases of torture, eviction orders and curfews to restrict the movement of Syrian refugees.

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Rafaat Falih is 33 years old A Syrian army deserter who sought refuge in Lebanon in 2022 was arrested by Lebanese authorities in January but then disappeared. The Cedar Center for Legal Studies (CCLS), which helps people subjected to torture and arbitrary detention, suggests he may have been secretly deported to Syria.

the foreign policy contacted Falih’s relatives in Syria by phone from Beirut. They said they had learned that Falih was currently being held at Sednaya military prison near Damascus, which is colloquially known as the “Human Slaughterhouse.” The relatives were asked to pay about $2,000 to facilitate Falih’s transfer from prison to the military justice system so he could stand trial, but they were unable to secure the funds. A family member had a rare opportunity to visit Falih in prison and reported that his health was poor due to malnutrition and systematic torture.

Saadeddine Shatila, executive director of the CCLS, said the Lebanese army is returning many refugees directly to Syrian authorities without first referring their cases to the public prosecutor of the Lebanese Court of Cassation — a procedure that violates Lebanese law.

The final decisions on deportation officially rest with the Director of the Lebanese General Security and the Public Prosecutor. When a Syrian citizen is arrested in Lebanon without legal residence — or if he entered after April 24, 2019 — he is taken to the General Security. If he is not registered with the UNHCR or does not have legal residence in Lebanon, he is sent back to Syria. If he is registered with the UNHCR, a representative visits him in prison to ask if he wants to voluntarily return to Syria or stay in Lebanon.

From 15 November 2023 to 30 May 2024, the CCLS reviewed 200 cases of people facing deportation to Syria. Of these, 126 cases were referred to the UN (including the UNHCR and mechanisms such as the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and the Special Rapporteur on Torture), 33 people were released and 28 were deported to Syria. Ten of the deported people were arrested in Syria. Shatila argues that unlawful deportation also constitutes torture under Article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture.

Ultimately, he blames the Lebanese authorities for fueling the anti-Syrian narrative. Shahrour of the Samir Kassir Foundation agrees. “Hate speech against refugees distracts from Lebanon’s deeper problems, such as political corruption,” he said, calling for solutions “in transparent aid distribution and accountability, not in blaming.”

One of CCLS’ torture cases involves Abdel, the pseudonym of a 38-year-old man who wishes to remain anonymous to protect his safety.

Abdel said the foreign policy phone call that Lebanese authorities arrested him in 2015. They accused him of murder and belonging to a designated terrorist organization, which he denied. Then, he said, they tortured him to extract a confession.

“Lebanon’s military intelligence beat me all over my body with a garden hose. There was a gun in the investigation office, they threatened to kill me and hit me in the head with a shoe. … When they saw the blood … they stopped beating me,” he said. “Then they started beating me repeatedly with a pipe and threatened to electrocute me and hand me over to the regime.”

He has since undergone surgery twice, but still suffers severe pain. He is not alone; in 2021, Amnesty International documented similar cases of 24 Syrian refugees who were detained in Lebanon on terrorism charges and then tortured. And as long as the Lebanese government continues to detain Syrians and threaten to deport them, the abuses are likely to continue.

For those who were sent back to Syria, a worse fate awaits, a relative of one of the deportees said. the foreign policy“They can torture him to death and bury him in a mass grave, as happened to thousands of prisoners; they can shoot him, or he can die from disease and malnutrition.”