Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) totally condemns the much-publicized decision by the Danish government to “strip Syrian refugees of their residency permits”.
Syrian refugees must be provided protection by the international community and individual states, says the AOHR UK.
Still, under Bashar al-Assad’s rule-following his regime’s brutal, militarized repression of the democratic uprising that started in 2011, Syria remains a profoundly dangerous country for anyone considered a critic of the government.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed since 2011, most of them civilians, the vast majority at the hands of the regime and its foreign allies, notably Russian and Iran.
Numerous international human rights organisations, including AOHR UK, are in agreement that Syria remains unsafe for the millions of Syrians who were forced to flee the country over the last decade.
Yet the Danish government, alone in Europe, has decided that Syria is safe, and is seeking to eject numerous Syrians from the country. Through the summer of 2020, approximately 500 Syrians’ residency claims were re-examined, and 189 were revoked.
One of those 189 is 19-year-old student Aya Abdu-Daher, whose impassioned plea to remain in Denmark – given in fluent Danish and broadcast on national television – has ignited debate in the country itself.
Others have been placed in detention centres.
The government claims that “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit”.
The UNHRC disagrees and has stated that it “does not consider that the recent improvements in security in parts of Syria to be sufficiently fundamental, stable or durable to justify ending international protection for any group of refugees”.
In the face of the Danish government’s intransigence, AOHR UK calls on all relevant bodies to demand that all Syrians be granted permanent leave to remain in the Nordic countries.
