In Denmark, Syrian families fear being sent home
Issued on: I m scared of returning to Syria, Sabriya al-Fayyad (R) told AFP Tom LITTLE AFP 4 min
Vejle (Denmark) (AFP)
Sabriya al-Fayyad is terrified of what the Syrian regime will do to her family if Denmark sends them like hundreds of other Syrians back to Damascus. I m scared of returning to Syria, of this regime that killed my husband and his brother, she tells AFP.
At the end of March, al-Fayyad and her two young daughters had their Danish residency permits revoked after the Danish authorities announced they now considered the Syrian capital safe .
Syrian families in Denmark fear being sent home
12.05.2021
Sabriya al-Fayyad is terrified of what the Syrian regime will do to her family if Denmark sends them – like hundreds of other Syrians – back to Damascus. I m scared of returning to Syria, of this regime that killed my husband and his brother, she tells journalists.
At the end of March, al-Fayyad and her two young daughters had their Danish residency permits revoked after the Danish authorities announced they now considered the Syrian capital safe . Her two sons, who are old enough to be drafted into Syria s military, were allowed to stay in Denmark.
Rahima remembers the demonstrations during her childhood in Aleppo. Her teachers organised them, she never questioned what was going on.
“They drew the Syrian flag on our cheeks, gave us signs to hold and told us, standing in front of our school, to shout out that we loved Assad.”
We learned, she told Euronews, the only way to live in Assad s dictatorship is by accepting the repression.
When Rahima was 11 a bomb dropped next to her classroom. Her dad, a Kurdish doctor, came and picked her up and said it would be best to go to their cabin in Afrin in northern Syria for a few weeks until the situation in Aleppo bettered. They stayed there for three years.
FOR MORE than a year, Denmark has been trying to send people back to Syria. It says it will only send back those who hail from in or around Damascus, the Syrian capital. That part of the country, which is firmly in the grip of President Bashar al-Assad, has seen no fighting for three years. Therefore, the left-wing Danish government argues, it is now safe for people to return.
Syria experts disagree. Human Rights Watch, an NGO, says that Syrians who go back are likely to be locked up or tortured. The regime might see the fact that they fled the country in the first place as evidence of disloyalty, and it has often murdered people it suspects of that. Yet Denmark has doubled down on its decision. Since taking office in 2019, the government has reviewed the cases of more than 600 of the 33,000 Syrian refugees in the country. It removed “temporary protection” status from more than 200 of them, including nearly 100 this year. Another 410 are in jeopardy.