The Washington Post: Denmark faces criticism after pushing to send refugees back to Syria
Syrians seeking asylum are led away by police in Padborg, Denmark, conducting passport checks on Denmark's border with Germany in 2016. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The Danish government “is destroying the country by trying to follow these voters that they expect would agree with this policy,” said Michala Bendixen, head of Refugees Welcome Denmark. “It’s ruining our reputation around the world. And it’s ruining integration for those [refugees] who are already here.”
About 500 Syrians have been stuck in limbo since Denmark said it is reassessing temporary residency permits for refugees from Damascus, the capital, and Rif Damascus province, both controlled by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
A 2019 report by the Danish Immigration Service classified these areas as safe, citing a decline in fighting there since 2015. But on Monday, some of the experts and organizations interviewed for the report denounced the government’s conclusion.
“Damascus may not have seen active conflict hostilities since May 2018 — but that does not mean that it has become safe for refugees to return to the Syrian capital,” they wrote in a letter published by New York-based Human Rights Watch. “Many of the key drivers of displacement from Syria remain, as the majority of refugees fled, and continue to fear, the government’s security apparatus, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, military conscription, and harassment and discrimination.”
The European Parliament, the United Nations’ refugee agency and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, among others, have rejected forcible returns to Syria.
“It’s not in the interest of the Syrian people to pressure Syrian refugees to return to Syria, including to regime-held areas, where many fear they will be arbitrarily detained, tortured or even killed by Assad’s security forces in retaliation for fleeing,” Blinken told the U.N. Security Council in March.
Charlotte Slente, secretary general of the Danish Refugee Council, said in an email to The Post, “As long as the situation in Syria is not conducive for returns, we think that it is pointless to remove people from the life they are trying to build in Denmark and put them in a waiting position without an end date, after they have fled the horrible conflict in their homeland.”
Since 2019, the Danish Immigration Service has revoked or refused to renew the residency permits of about 200 Syrians from Damascus and Rif Damascus, according to figures it provided to The Washington Post.