OSLO: Norway said Tuesday it was repatriating from Syria two sisters who went there as teenagers as well as their three children, citing abysmal conditions in the displacement camp where they were housed.
“The living conditions in the camps are extremely bad and dangerous. These Norwegian children have been living for a long time in these camps where no children should have to live,” Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said in a statement.
They were handed over on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria.
The two sisters of Somali origin clandestinely left Norway for Syria in late 2013, aged 16 and 19, to join a popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad, as they would later explain in an email exchange.
Norwegian writer Asne Seierstad recounted their experiences in a book.
The sisters, now aged 29 and 25, are between them mothers to three daughters born from partnerships with Daesh group fighters, according to Norwegian paper Verdens Gang.
“The two women themselves asked for assistance to return with their children (and) know they will be arrested on arrival in Norway,” said Huitfeldt.
The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria said that “two women and three children from Daesh families” who were in the Roj camp were handed over to a Norwegian diplomat on Tuesday.
A statement said the children were aged six, seven and eight.
The situation of the sisters has been much discussed in Norway, as have similar cases involving youngsters from other European countries who made their way to Syria.
One such case was that of Shamima Begum, 23, who was stripped of her British citizenship after traveling to Syria as a teen to marry an Daesh fighter and who last month lost her legal battle to reverse the decision.
Huitfeldt noted that the United States as well as the UN and Kurdish authorities have been backing repatriation in such cases, citing instability in the region.
Norway in 2020 repatriated a woman from Syria with Daesh links as one of her children was seriously ill.
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Norway says repatriating sisters and children from Syria
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Norway says repatriating sisters and children from Syria
- "The living conditions in the camps are extremely bad and dangerous,” Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said
- The two sisters of Somali origin clandestinely left Norway for Syria in late 2013, aged 16 and 19, to join a popular uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad
US heading to ‘authoritarianism’, warns Human Rights Watch
- HRW: US President Donald Trump has shown ‘blatant disregard for human rights and egregious violations’
WASHINGTON: Human Rights Watch warned Wednesday that President Donald Trump was turning the United States into an authoritarian state as democracy declines globally to its lowest ebb in four decades.
Trump’s return to the White House has intensified a “downward spiral” on human rights that was already under pressure from Russia and China, the New York-based advocacy and research group said in its annual report.
“The rules-based international order is being crushed,” HRW said.
In the United States, the group said, Trump has shown “blatant disregard for human rights and egregious violations.”
In descriptions that would have been unthinkable in the US section of its previous annual reports, the group pointed to the deployment of masked, armed agents — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency — which has carried out “hundreds of unnecessarily violent and abusive raids.”
“The administration’s racial and ethnic scapegoating, domestic deployment of National Guard forces in pretextual power grabs, repeated acts of retaliation against perceived political enemies and former officials now critical of him, as well as attempts to expand the coercive powers of the executive and neuter democratic checks and balances, underpin a decided shift toward authoritarianism in the US,” the report said.
Human Rights Watch repeated its finding that the United States engaged in enforced disappearances — a crime under international law — by sending 252 Venezuelan migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Trump’s return to the White House has intensified a “downward spiral” on human rights that was already under pressure from Russia and China, the New York-based advocacy and research group said in its annual report.
“The rules-based international order is being crushed,” HRW said.
In the United States, the group said, Trump has shown “blatant disregard for human rights and egregious violations.”
In descriptions that would have been unthinkable in the US section of its previous annual reports, the group pointed to the deployment of masked, armed agents — the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency — which has carried out “hundreds of unnecessarily violent and abusive raids.”
“The administration’s racial and ethnic scapegoating, domestic deployment of National Guard forces in pretextual power grabs, repeated acts of retaliation against perceived political enemies and former officials now critical of him, as well as attempts to expand the coercive powers of the executive and neuter democratic checks and balances, underpin a decided shift toward authoritarianism in the US,” the report said.
Human Rights Watch repeated its finding that the United States engaged in enforced disappearances — a crime under international law — by sending 252 Venezuelan migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
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