Human Rights Watch interviewed 65 refugees who returned or their families and documented 21 arrests, 13 incidents of torture, three kidnappings, five extrajudicial killings, 17 disappearances, and one allegation of sexual violence.
“Syria is a death country, a kidnapping country. Anyone coming back will lose their money or their life,” Salam, a 26-year-old in Daraa, Syria, just north of the Jordanian border, was quoted saying in the report.
In a decade of civil conflict, 12 million Syrians, half the country’s prewar population, has fled their homes because of violence and 350,209 people have been killed, according to United Nations figures. Some 6.6 million Syrians are refugees, 5.6 million of them are living in neighbouring countries where conditions are hard.
In Lebanon, which is in a state of economic collapse, “over 90 percent of Syrian refugees live in extreme poverty” and in Jordan, “only two percent of refugee households can meet their essential food needs,” and UN fundraising appeals for humanitarian aid are drastically underfunded, Human Rights Watch reported. Though their situation in their host country is difficult, most do not choose to go back home and those who do have limited information about the situation in Syria.
Active conflict has ended in most of the country, but it is not safe, the watchdog stated.
“The harrowing accounts of torture, enforced disappearance, and abuse that refugees who went back to Syria endured should make it patently clear that Syria is not safe for returns,” said refugee and migrant rights researcher Nadia Hardman who authored the Human Rights Watch report.
Returnees told Human Rights Watch that they were arrested at checkpoints located at most entrances to cities and on major highways and controlled by a variety of militias and state security agencies.
“There are a lot of arrests in the checkpoints. The checkpoints always check the youth,” said Jawad who returned to Syria in August 2020.
Returnees are often conscripted into the armed forces, other are accused of supporting terrorism in relation to money they had sent to family members who had remained in Syria.
In detention, returnees reported being tortured, beaten, and given electric shock.
“They started to beat me on my chest and broke three bones on my chest...” a returnee named Abdul recounted. “I would wake up and hear the screams of other people being tortured.”
Other returnees living in Daraa “described living in an insecure environment characterized by arrests at checkpoints, kidnappings, racketeering, bribery and extortion, assassinations, and pervasive lawlessness and lack of accountability,” the report stated.
According to Human Rights Watch, Lebanon has an “aggressive returns agenda” to pressure Syrian refugees to leave the country, dismantling their shelters, evicting them, and obstructing the renewal of residency permits. Jordan has made it difficult for Syrians to find work.
Denmark, in 2020, began revoking temporary residency permits of Syrian refugees, saying the situation in Damascus does not justify granting residency. The measure means they could be deported to Syria. On Tuesday, a petition to stop this policy received enough signatures to be submitted to the Danish parliament.
On Wednesday morning, 13 people were killed in a bombing of a bus in Damascus and at least five were killed in regime shelling of rebel-held Idlib province.
