Refugees returning to Syria face reprisals from government
The rights organization documented arrest, arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of abuse among Syrian refugees who returned to their home country from Lebanon and Jordan.
Syrian refugees who return to their home country risk grave human rights abuses and persecution at the hands of the Syrian government and its affiliated militias, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.
The 72-page report released Wednesday is based on interviews with 65 returnees and family members who went back to Syria from Lebanon and Jordan between 2017 and 2021. Of that group, the New York-based rights group documented 21 cases of arrest and arbitrary detention, 13 cases of torture, three kidnappings, five extrajudicial killings, 17 enforced disappearances and one allegation of sexual violence.
Researchers also interviewed lawyers, Syrian experts, nongovernmental organizations and UN and humanitarian agencies in Jordan and Lebanon.
Even as the decade-long conflict in Syria is winding down in parts of the country, the regime “has continued to pursue the same abuses against citizens that led them to flee in the first place,” the report notes.
