Syria still not safe for refugees to return – HRW
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The absence of indiscriminate violence in part of Syria does not mean the country is safe for the refugees and asylum seekers to return, Bill Frelick, Refugee and Migrant Rights Division Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said on Friday.
This came after Cyprus asked the European Union (EU) last week to reevaluate Syria’s status as an unsafe country to be able to return refugees back to Syria.
Cypriot Minster of Interior, Constantinos Ioannou, said he would try to convince the EU to change Syria’s status as a unsafe country to be able to repatriate asylum-seekers, since there are areas considered safe by the European Union Asylum Agency (EUAA).
“That pattern of abuse and persecution has not ceased,” Frelick added. “As recently as July, Human Rights Watch found that returnees had been tortured in Syrian military intelligence’s custody and conscripted to serve in Syria’s military reserve force.”
He pointed out that the absence of indiscriminate violence in part of the country “does not mean the country is safe.”
On Sep.5, the EUAA revealed that during the first half of 2023, they received 519,000 applications for asylum, the highest level for this time of the year since the refugee crisis of 2015-2016, mostly by Syrian refugees. The EUAA’s analysis predicted that applications could surpass one million by the end of 2023.
“In Syria, where the EUAA rates eight governorates as having high or exceptionally high levels of indiscriminate violence, the Assad government’s long-standing intolerance and suppression of dissent, and its suspicion and hostility toward Syrians whom it believes opposed it, means fear-of-persecution claims of anyone who fled the country must be seriously considered,” the HRW official noted.