Syrians criticize refugees conference held in Damascus
DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – Syrians in Damascus addressed the holding of an international conference on Syrian refugees with irony and sarcasm, mockingly calling for the holding a conference to get the remaining Syrians out of Syria.
“We are refugees at home,” said a Syrian journalist working for a government institution, after sarcastic comments about the situation of Syrians in country and waiting for smart card messages to obtain sugar, rice and gas.
Muhammad Naji (a pseudonym), said: “Good for those who left this rotten country.” Another commented: “We, those remaining in country, need a conference.”
Others believe that Syrians in country are refugees, but without the least rights: “We are prisoners condemned to hard labor for a life filled with misery.”
On Wednesday, an international conference on the return of Syrian refugees was held in Damascus, with the participation of delegates from a number of countries to discuss the suffering of the refugees and facilitate their return.
The conference is being held while the queues of Syrians in the Syrian government-held areas in front of the bakeries remained unchanged for the second month in a row, amid official silence.
An insecure environment
“One of the conditions for holding such a conference is to provide a safe environment and to release all detainees who are in the regime’s prisons,” Yahya Aziz, Secretary of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCC), told North Press.
“The Syrian regime does not seem to accept discussion, and the condition of the key to a safe environment is to release the detainees and disclose their fates and the fates of the missing and the kidnapped,” he added.
Aziz believes that the conference came outside the context of the political process, “as if a safe environment is available, and the reconciliations that have taken place and are taking place are subjected to security considerations first and not to humanitarian ones.”
Luay Hussein, head of the Building the State Movement who resides outside Syria, said: “The Syrian authorities are able to provide a side that has nothing to do with the siege, sanctions, and the Western and UN boycott to repatriate the refugees, who make up about a third of all Syrians.”
“They are able to unleash political freedoms by defining clear, accurate, and transparent legal controls for arrests, and by allowing the formation of civil society organizations that do not require the approval of the intelligence services.”
Queues all over Europe
“Queues of refugees have prevailed in European capitals to book a return card to the country to get two kilos of sugar and a kilo of rice, and to stand in queue for hours to get a bundle of bread,” one Syrian said sarcastically.
Syrian Associate Minister of Foreign Minister Ayman Sousan said that the Syrian state is working to facilitate the return of the displaced and refugees to their country after “creating the appropriate conditions for this.”
Persuading the Syrians to stay
Other Syrians living outside Syria mocked the conference. Adnan Abdulrazzaq, a Syrian journalist, posted on his Facebook that the name of the conference should be changed “from Returning or Repatriating the Refugees, to Persuading to Stay Conference.”
“I did not contact a respected person in country, unless he asked me about a way to escape the hell of staying in Assad’s Syria. If the borders of any country in the world are opened, there will be no one left but the Assads.”
The opposition is powerless and dependent
Abdulrazzaq also attacked the Syrian opposition abroad and said: “What are the signs the opposition presented regarding the impossibility of living and returning under the deadly regime?”
Riyad Nasr (a pseudonym), residing in Damascus, said that Russia is in crisis and wants to mobilize support for its plans to attract European and Gulf states’ money for reconstruction so that it begins to benefit widely from Syria.
The conference discusses humanitarian aid, cooperation among scientific and educational organizations, and post-war infrastructure reconstruction.
A day prior to the conference, the European Union announced that member states will not attend the conference and consider it “premature.” “The priority is to take real measures to create the conditions for a safe return,” it added.
According to the Syrian government’s official statements, the conference will last for two days, with several sessions discussing the current conditions, the possibility of the refugees’ return, and the obstacles to their return. It will discuss humanitarian aid, cooperation between scientific and educational organizations, and post-war infrastructure reconstruction.
The number of Syrian refugees abroad exceeds six million spread over 126 countries, according to a report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2019.