Mervat Muhammed, Baladi News
There is an explicit pressure campaign supported by a number of official Lebanese entities to force the Syrian refugees to go back to the Assad-held regions in Syria starting from storming into the camps in Arsal, destroying the tents, and arresting the men, but not ending with burning a number of refugee camps in Lebanon. This campaign came concurrently with calls from pro-regime Lebanese officials demanding coordination with Assad's regime in order to send the refugees back to regions they pretend to be safe, the thing that includes grave violations to the International Law and Human Rights as the conditions of such a return of refugees, like a political compromise and cessation of fights, are not fulfilled yet.
Forced Return, A Legal Scandal
The Syrian lawyer and human rights activist, Ghazwan Qrunful, explains that the militia of Hezbollah and its allies in the Free National Current had an early hostile attitude towards the existence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Qrunful said in an interview with Baladi News: "Legally, no one can force the Syrian refugees to return to their country as long as it lives the condition of war and armed clashes where they won't be safe neither physically nor psychologically, considering that any attempt in this direction will lead to a legal scandal at the international level which Lebanon will pay for it.
"Many Syrian human rights organizations, including ours, have sounded the alarm and issued a statement in this regard. They are also communicating on the international level to protect refugees from this oppression and prevent this forcible return to the regions controlled by the ruling gang in Damascus the thing that threatens their lives", he added
The journalist and member of the Work Group for the Syrian Detainees, Sakhar Idris, believes that Hezbollah militia wants the Syrian refugees in Lebanon to go back to the regime-held regions in order to present Assad as a victorious leader who is able to keep its regions safe before the international community.
Idris confirms that lawyers, journalists, and activists have to counter those procedures against the refugees, especially the accident of killing 10 refugees at the hands of the Lebanese army, calling for forming a committee to investigate in the crime and hold the perpetrators accountable before the court.
Burnishing The Regime's Image
The strategy of pushing the refugees back to their country aims at forcibly recruiting them in the ranks of regime's army and its allied militias. The political analyst, Jamil Ammar, said that the Syrian regime wants the refugees to come back in order to send a message to the International Community saying that those people are not refugees, but rather civilians who fled the terrorism of armed factions like ISIS, al-Nusra, and FSA and not from the regime. Ammar added that the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are a huge economic weight due to their enormous number in a country with weak capabilities and regarding the security aspect, Ammar says that "we can't deny that some militants of ISIS exist among the Syrian refugees, exploiting the poverty and weakness of them, the thing that can be considered a pressure on the Lebanese government.