Lebanon calls on governorates to stop renting flats to unregistered Syrian refugees

The Lebanese government has called on governorates in the country to stop renting apartments or issuing documents to unregistered Syrian refugees in the country.

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi also asked that Syrians across the country be registered as part of a new survey.

It is the latest in a series of measures aimed at targeting Syrian refugees in the country after hundreds have been arrested and dozens deported.

The Lebanese Armed Forces have raided houses across the country, rounded up Syrians with expired residency cards and deported them to Syria in the past few weeks.

The brother of one deported Syrian told the advocacy group Amnesty International that he was driven to the border by the Lebanese army where he was handed over to the Syrian army.

Human rights groups have warned against the dangers of returning Syrian refugees back to their country where they are at risk of arrest, torture, forced disappearance and mandatory military service.

READ: Syrian refugees deported from Lebanon face arrest, conscription, say relatives

Lebanese authorities have tried to claim that Syria is now safe since the fighting has subsided and there is a relative end to hostilities.

The head of Lebanon’s Maronite Church caused an outcry in early April when he called for the deportation of Syrian refugees claiming they were “draining the state’s reserves.” Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai accused the international community of ignoring the repercussions Syrian refugees have on Lebanon.

At the end of April two Syrian refugees who were forcibly returned from Lebanon were arrested and detained by Syrian authorities in a detention centre in Damascus.

Amnesty International has said that the deportation of Syrian refugees by the Lebanese authorities is a clear violation of international law which prohibits states from forcibly returning people to their country if they risk persecution there.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians escaped the fighting at home and fled to neighbouring Lebanon. Roughly 830,000 are registered with the United Nations.

In January the United Nations warned that Syrian refugees in Lebanon were in a dangerous situation and that nine out of ten Syrians in Lebanon lived in extreme poverty.

People in the refugee camps were burning rubbish and sheep dung as fuel to survive the harsh winter.