BEIRUT: European aid sent to Lebanon in an attempt to regulate migration by sea is funding practices that violate human rights, according to a global watchdog report published Wednesday.
As part of a policy to contain migration, authorities in Cyprus have physically pushed Syrian refugees back to Lebanon, and Lebanese security agencies have deported them, the Human Rights Watch report said.
The report, based on interviews with 16 Syrians who tried to leave Lebanon via smuggler boats, found that 15 of them “suffered human rights violations at the hands of Lebanese and/or Cypriot authorities.”
Rights groups have frequently criticized the tactics of authorities in both Lebanon and Cyprus in dealing with would-be migrants and asylum seekers. Officials from the two countries deny violating any laws but say they are overwhelmed by the migration they are facing.
Lebanon, which has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis since 2019, hosts around 775,000 registered Syrian refugees and hundreds of thousands more unregistered, the world’s highest refugee population per capita.
Lebanese political officials have pushed for western countries to resettle the refugees or assist in returning them to Syria — voluntarily or not. At the same time, Lebanon has an agreement with Cyprus to halt the smuggling of migrants and has received substantial funding from the European Union and European countries for border control.
In some cases, Syrian refugees who were caught by the Lebanese army attempting to leave to Cyprus by sea have been driven to the Lebanon-Syria border and dumped on the Syrian side, Human Rights Watch said. Allegedly, some of them were then detained by the Syrian army, while others were extorted by smugglers for passage back to Lebanon.
Cyprus, meanwhile, suspended processing of Syrian asylum applications in April. Human Rights Watch accused Cypriot authorities of forcibly turning back boats carrying asylum seekers coming from Lebanon.
In some cases, Cypriot authorities forcibly prevented asylum seekers from landing, and in other cases they made it to shore but “were not given the opportunity to claim asylum” and instead were detained and then returned to Lebanon, where some were then deported to Syria, the report said.
“Both Lebanese and Cypriot authorities used excessive force at the time of arrest and during detention,” Human Rights Watch said.
The European Union and European countries gave Lebanon some 16.7 million euros ($18.5 million) from 2020 to 2023 for border management “mainly in the form of capacity-building projects explicitly aimed at enhancing Lebanon’s ability to prevent irregular migration,” the report said. In August, the European Union allocated another 32 million euros ($35.3 million) to “continue implementing border management enhancement projects in Lebanon through 2025,” it said.
Cyprus’ Deputy Ministry of Migration and International Protection in a statement denied carrying out so-called pushbacks. It noted that Cyprus is a “small frontline country” that has “received massive migrant flows over the last few years.”
“The state’s capacity to host additional migrants is overstretched,” the statement said. “Therefore, we aim to strike a balance between our legal obligations and the realities on the ground.”
Lebanon’s General Security agency told Human Rights Watch that between Jan. 1, 2022, and Aug. 1, 2024, it recorded 1,388 people, including 821 Syrians, on 15 departing boats, who were caught attempting to leave Lebanon. General Security maintained that every deportation of which it “had knowledge and on which it coordinated, was subject to international human rights law standards.”
Acting Director-General Beate Gminder of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs said in a response to the report’s findings that the commission “takes allegations of wrongdoings very seriously,” but that it is the responsibility of national authorities to “investigate any allegations of violations of fundamental rights” and to prosecute wrongdoing.
Rights group alleges Lebanon and Cyprus violated refugees’ human rights and EU funds paid for it
https://arab.news/pekc4
Rights group alleges Lebanon and Cyprus violated refugees’ human rights and EU funds paid for it
- Rights groups have frequently criticized the tactics of authorities in both Lebanon and Cyprus in dealing with would-be migrants and asylum seekers
- Officials from the two countries deny violating any laws but say they are overwhelmed by the migration they are facing
US raid allegedly killed Syrian undercover agent instead of Daesh group official
- Neither US nor Syrian government officials have commented on the death, an indication that neither side wants the incident to derail improving ties
- Weeks after the raid, interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa visited Washington and announced Syria would join the global coalition against Daesh
DUMAYR, Syria: A raid by US forces and a local Syrian group aiming to capture an Daesh (IS) group official instead killed a man who had been working undercover gathering intelligence on the extremists, family members and Syrian officials have told The Associated Press.
The killing in October underscores the complex political and security landscape as the United States begins working with interim Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in the fight against remnants of IS.
According to relatives, Khaled Al-Masoud had been spying on IS for years on behalf of the insurgents led by Al-Sharaa and then for Al-Sharaa’s interim government, established after the fall of former President Bashar Assad a year ago. Al-Sharaa’s insurgents were mainly Islamists, some connected to Al-Qaeda, but enemies of IS who often clashed with it over the past decade.
Neither US nor Syrian government officials have commented on Al-Masoud’s death, an indication that neither side wants the incident to derail improving ties. Weeks after the Oct. 19 raid, Al-Sharaa visited Washington and announced Syria would join the global coalition against IS.
Still, Al-Masoud’s death could be “quite a setback” for efforts to combat IS, said Wassim Nasr, a senior research fellow with the Soufan Center, a New York-based think tank focused on security issues.
Al-Masoud had been infiltrating IS in the southern deserts of Syria known as the Badiya, one of the places where remnants of the extremist group have remained active, Nasr said.
The raid targeting him was a result of “the lack of coordination between the coalition and Damascus,” Nasr said.
In the latest sign of the increasing cooperation, the US Central Command said Sunday that American troops and forces from Syria’s Interior Ministry had located and destroyed 15 IS weapons caches in the south.
Confusion around the raid
The raid occurred in Dumayr, a town east of Damascus on the edge of the desert. At around 3 a.m., residents woke to the sound of heavy vehicles and planes.
Residents said US troops conducted the raid alongside the Syrian Free Army, a US-trained opposition faction that had fought against Assad. The SFA now officially reports to the Syrian Defense Ministry.
Al-Masoud’s cousin, Abdel Kareem Masoud, said he opened his door and saw Humvees with US flags on them.
“There was someone on top of one of them who spoke broken Arabic, who pointed a machine gun at us and a green laser light and told us to go back inside,” he said.
Khaled Al-Masoud’s mother, Sabah Al-Sheikh Al-Kilani, said the forces then surrounded her son’s house next door, where he was with his wife and five daughters, and banged on the door.
Al-Masoud told them that he was with General Security, a force under Syria’s Interior Ministry, but they broke down the door and shot him, Al-Kilani said.
They took him away, wounded, Al-Kilani said. Later, government security officials told the family he had been released but was in the hospital. The family was then called to pick up his body. It was unclear when he had died.
“How did he die? We don’t know,” his mother said. “I want the people who took him from his children to be held accountable.”
Faulty intelligence
Al-Masoud’s family believes he was targeted based on faulty intelligence provided by members of the Syrian Free Army.
Representatives of the SFA did not respond to requests for comment.
Al-Masoud had worked with Al-Sharaa’s insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, in its northwestern enclave of Idlib before Assad’s fall, his cousin said. Then he returned to Dumayr and worked with the security services of Al-Sharaa’s government.
Two Syrian security officials and one political official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, confirmed that Al-Masoud had been working with Syria’s interim government in a security role. Two of the officials said he had worked on combating IS.
Initial media reports on the raid said it had captured an IS official. But US Central Command, which typically issues statements when a US operation kills or captures a member of the extremist group in Syria, made no announcement.
A US defense official, when asked for more information about the raid and its target and whether it had been coordinated with Syria’s government, said, “We are aware of these reports but do not have any information to provide.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations.
Representatives of Syria’s defense and interior ministries, and of US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack, declined to comment.
Increased coordination could prevent mistakes
At its peak in 2015, IS controlled a swath of territory across Iraq and Syria half the size of the United Kingdom. It was notorious for its brutality against religious minorities as well as Muslims not adhering to the group’s extreme interpretation of Islam.
After years of fighting, the US-led coalition broke the group’s last hold on territory in late 2019. Since then, US troops in Syria have been working to ensure IS does not regain a foothold. The US estimates IS still has about 2,500 members in Syria and Iraq. US Central Command last month said the number of IS attacks there had fallen to 375 for the year so far, compared to 1,038 last year.
Fewer than 1,000 US troops are believed to be operating in Syria, carrying out airstrikes and conducting raids against IS cells. They work mainly alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast and the Syrian Free Army in the south.
Now the US has another partner: the security forces of the new Syrian government.
Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor, has reported 52 incidents in which civilians were harmed or killed in coalition operations in Syria since 2020.
The group classified Al-Masoud as a civilian.
Airwars director Emily Tripp said the group has seen “multiple instances of what the US call ‘mistakes,’” including a 2023 case in which the US military announced it had killed an Al-Qaeda leader in a drone strike. The target later turned out to be a civilian farmer.
It was unclear if the Oct. 19 raid went wrong due to faulty intelligence or if someone deliberately fed the coalition false information. Nasr said that in the past, feuding groups have sometimes used the coalition to settle scores.
“That’s the whole point of having a hotline with Damascus, in order to see who’s who on the ground,” he said.
