A wave of swift door-to-border deportations is terrorizing Syrians in Lebanon, with more than 1,100 refugees arrested and 600 deported in April.
Four of the five Lebanese State Security officers indicted last November for the torture death of Syrian refugee Bashar Abdul Saud were released on bail this month, one of whom is back at work, while the victim’s family and lawyer have been pressured to drop their complaint.
Alaa fled to Germany at 16, after her brother was disappeared by Syrian government forces. She hoped to bring her parents later, but her reunification request was denied. She has not seen her parents for seven years, and has never met her six-year-old brother.
The lawyer representing the family of Bashar Al-saud, a Syrian refugee allegedly tortured to death by Lebanese State Security officers in August, called the indictment a “bold and historic” decision.
Facing a budget shortfall, the UN Refugee Agency and the World Food Program are cutting monthly cash assistance for some Syrian refugees in Lebanon, many of whom already live in extreme poverty.
With precarious access to safe water and rampant poverty, Syrian refugees in Lebanon face a cholera outbreak that has infected more than 3,000 people so far.
Refugees in Lebanon who signed up to return to Syria as part of a first batch of 1,600 families say economic hardship and a lack of a future in Lebanon informed their decision.
The family of Bashar Abdel Saud, a Syrian refugee who died while in the custody of Lebanon’s State Security last week, is fighting for accountability in a ‘climate of impunity’.
In cash-strapped Lebanon, discrimination against Syrians in bakery queues during recent weeks of bread shortages was the latest symptom of growing anti-refugee rhetoric and scapegoating.
Rashidieh camp in southern Lebanon hosts around 500 of the country’s 29,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria. They are the latest wave of displaced people to live there in its 83-year history.
