Amnesty International (AI) on Tuesday declared “Syria is not safe” for returning refugees, because they are being subjected to “detention, disappearance, and torture” by forces loyal to dictator Bashar Assad.
AI’s report, titled You’re Going To Your Death – taken from the warning one Syrian refugee was given by his hosts in Lebanon before returning home to be detained and tortured for six months – documented atrocities perpetrated by Syrian security forces against 66 returnees, 13 of them children. Five of the detainees died in Syrian state custody, while the fate of another 17 remains unknown.
The expressed purpose of AI’s report was to convince host nations not to compel refugees to return to Syria, now that its civil war is ostensibly over:
With a number of states – including Denmark, Sweden and Turkey – restricting protection and putting pressure on refugees from Syria to go home, the harrowing testimony in Amnesty International’s report is proof that no part of Syria is safe to return to. Returnees told Amnesty International that intelligence officers explicitly targeted them for their decision to flee Syria, accusing them of disloyalty or “terrorism.”
“Military hostilities may have subsided, but the Syrian government’s propensity for egregious human rights violations has not. The torture, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary or unlawful detention which forced many Syrians to seek asylum abroad are as rife as ever in Syria today. What’s more, the very fact of having fled Syria is enough to put returnees at risk of being targeted by authorities,” said Marie Forestier, Researcher on Refugee and Migrants Rights at Amnesty International.
“Any government claiming Syria is now safe is wilfully ignoring the horrific reality on the ground, leaving refugees once again fearing for their lives. We are urging European governments to grant refugee status to people from Syria, and immediately halt any practice directly or indirectly forcing people to return to Syria. The governments of Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan must protect Syrian refugees from deportation or any other forcible return, in line with their international obligations.”
AI was especially critical of the belief among European leaders that cosmopolitan Damascus and its suburbs are relatively safe for returnees, insisting that a third of the human rights violations documented in its report occurred within the Syrian capital city.
AI said Syrian government forces are targeting returnees for unlawful detention, physical abuse, and rape because they were accused of “treason,” charged with “supporting terrorism,” or “simply because they came from parts of Syria that had been under opposition control.”
The Assad regime and its patrons in Russia and Iran routinely condemned all forces resisting Bashar Assad’s rule as “terrorists.” Assad has mused in public that a large number of “terrorists” escaped from Syria, after he gained the upper hand in the civil war, by posing as refugees.
There is no question that terrorist organizations were active in the Syrian opposition, including al-Qaeda, but as AI noted, the Assad regime tends to apply the “terrorist” label with a very broad brush – and once people accused of terrorism are in the hands of Assad’s notoriously brutal intelligence agencies and prison wardens, horrors ensue.
Returnees who spoke to AI’s investigators said they were greeted with fury by Assad officials. “Why did you leave Syria? Because you don’t like Bashar al-Assad and you don’t like Syria? You’re a terrorist,” one female returnee was told by a security officer.
“Syria is not a hotel that you leave and return to when you want,” the officer sneered, proceeding to sexually assault both the woman and her five-year-old daughter.
The report documented “14 cases of sexual violence committed by security forces, including seven cases of rape, committed against five women, a teenage boy and a five-year-old girl.” These assaults allegedly took place at detention centers and border crossings.
“This is to welcome you to your country. If you get out of Syria again and come back again, we will welcome you in a bigger way. We are trying to humiliate you and your son. You will not forget [this] humiliation in all your life,” another security officer told a woman who returned to Syria from Lebanon with her teenage son and three-year-old daughter.
Some family members of returnees reported investigation and harassment by regime officials after their loved ones were detained. AI logged reports of entire families disappearing. In some cases, “disappeared” returnees were found and released by Assad’s officials after hefty ransoms and bribes were paid.
“The Assad government has attempted to depict Syria as a country in recovery. The reality is that Syrian authorities are still perpetrating the widespread and systematic human rights violations that contributed to millions of people seeking safety abroad,” said AI researcher Marie Forestier.
On Sunday, lawyers for six Syrian refugees arrested by Lebanese security services argued that if their clients are deported back to Syria, their lives would be in severe danger.
Lawyer Mohammed Sablouh said Lebanese authorities “know very well that since they were arrested outside the embassy, they are therefore wanted by the Syrian regime, and there is a really high probability they would be tortured or in grave danger.”
Five of the six refugees detained in Lebanon hail from Deraa, a province where the Syrian government is still sporadically fighting against rebel forces. As the Amnesty International report argued, this makes it likely the refugees would be classified as terrorists and abused by Syrian security forces upon their return. AI therefore urged the Lebanese government not to deport them.