Benghazi: A small boat carrying more than 230 potential migrants, most of them Syrians, capsized and began to sink after leaving Lebanon's northern coast on New Year's Eve.
Since the collapse of Lebanon's economy in 2019, an increasing number of individuals, mostly Syrian and Palestinian refugees, but also Lebanese citizens, have attempted to leave the country and travel to Europe by sea. Many times, the attempts end in death.
This time, rescuers from the Lebanese Navy and UN peacekeepers stationed on the border with Israel were able to save everyone except two passengers – a Syrian woman and a drowning child. However, for many survivors the respite was only temporary.
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According to some of the survivors and human rights observers, the Lebanese army loaded about 200 rescued Syrians into trucks and crossed an informal border crossing in the far northeastern Lebanese region of Wadi Khalid to bring them back to the coast. Dropped on the side the port of Tripoli, where they recovered overnight.
Although the order of the deportations was still unknown, the incident marks an increase in the Lebanese military's deportations of Syrians at a time when the rhetoric against refugees in the small, crisis-hit country has become more strident. Requests for comment from representatives of the military and General Security, organizations typically overseeing immigration matters, went unanswered.
The boat survivors were stopped after crossing the border and taken into a large plastic greenhouse by men dressed in Syrian army uniforms. He was imprisoned there until family members paid for his release so that he could be taken back to Lebanon by smugglers.
"It was a case of people buying and selling, buying and selling," said Yassin al-Yassin, a 32-year-old Syrian refugee who has lived in Lebanon since 2012. Al-Yassin claimed that he paid his brother $600 to return to Lebanon, with the money being split between the Syrian military and smugglers. Syrian officials did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.
Mahmoud al-Dayoub, a 43-year-old refugee from Syria's Homs region who was also on the boat, claimed to have heard his captors haggling over the price of each captor.
Dayab, who has been registered as a refugee in Lebanon since 2012, said, "I don't know if it was the Syrian army or smugglers. We had 30 people with guns, and we had no idea what was happening." " , the man claimed. My only concern was to avoid being sent to Syria because if I had been, I might not have come back.
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Dayub claimed that despite his family not paying a ransom for him, he was able to escape and return across the border. Lebanon's ongoing campaign to persuade Syrian refugees to return home has taken a disturbing new turn in the case of boat survivors, human rights watchdogs claim.
The world's largest concentration of refugees per capita is found in Lebanon, which is home to some 815,000 Syrian refugees who have registered as such and possibly hundreds of thousands more. However, Lebanese authorities have lamented the mass exodus of Syrians since the country's economic crisis began three years ago.
Lebanon's General Security Agency has made weak attempts to persuade refugees to return home voluntarily. In some cases, the agency has returned individuals to Syria under a 2019 rule that allows for the deportation of unauthorized refugees who entered Lebanon after April of that year.
Human rights organizations have documented incidents of detained and returning refugees being tortured; The Lebanese government denies these claims.
Until recently, deportations were generally carried out in small numbers and according to formal procedures, allowing the United Nations and human rights organizations to become involved and, in some cases, prevent them.
According to Lebanese human rights lawyer Mohamed Sablouh, what happened to the boat survivors "violates human rights, Lebanese laws and international treaties."
Lisa Abu Khaled, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Lebanon, said the organization was "following up with the relevant authorities" on the matter.
"All people who have survived at sea and who may fear their country of origin (return) should be given a chance to seek protection," she said. Syrians who have crossed illegally are often turned back by the Lebanese army.
Jimmy Jabbour, a member of parliament for the northern Akkar district, which includes Wadi Khaled, claimed that rather than formally deporting would-be migrants who crossed into Lebanon via smuggler routes, army patrols frequently round them up and throw them across the border in no man's land.
Jabbour added that he had complained to the army about the practise. After being deported, the individuals simply pay smugglers to bring them back in.
It's not the army's responsibility to provide smugglers with employment opportunities, he asserted. "The army's responsibility is to turn them over to General Security... and General Security is in charge of delivering them to Syrian authorities.
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The New Year's Eve boat survivors included refugees who had been living in Lebanon for more than ten years and were registered with the UN, in contrast to the recently arrived migrants.
One of them, a Syrian woman from Idlib who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation, claimed she was held at the border for two nights before her family paid $300 to have her released and allowed to return to Lebanon. "I can't go back" (to Syria). She uttered, "I would rather die and dive into the sea.
Many refugees take to the sea to avoid deportation, according to Jasmin Lilian Diab, director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University.
The number of migrant boats leaving Lebanon increased, according to Diab's institute, in the latter part of 2022. Some individuals informed her research team that the rhetoric against refugees was the reason they left. According to Diab, they were concerned that they would be "deported and sent back to Syria." Therefore, they believed that it was their only opportunity to leave the area.