Syrian refugees in Europe: news from Belgium and Sweden
One year after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, the government’s brutal crackdown on activists and protesters increasingly attracts criticism from the international community. With the death toll surpassing 7,500, tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to neighbouring countries, with some also arriving in Europe. Below are two translations of articles regarding asylum claims in Belgium and Sweden.
Frozen Syrian requests for asylum
LeVif.be, 14 February 2012
For almost a year, Belgian authorities have chosen not to follow up on asylum requests from Syria (reported by De Standaard, 14 February 2012). The situation in the country being uncertain, it is difficult to establish precisely which persons risk real danger.
Although nothing has been officially decided yet and requests are not frozen, according to Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons Dirk van den Bulck, in practice there is no systematic treatment of asylum requests. Syrians lodging requests are not called in for interviews, and a few hundred asylum seekers find themselves in this situation. In 2011 the General Commissariat for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA) recorded a rise of 43 percent of Syrian asylum seekers in relation to 2010, totaling 555 cases. Most of them are not from Syrian towns which are currently violent battlegrounds such as Homs. There, people are staying to fight or are in such a precarious position that they cannot reach Belgium, claims the CGRA. Most of the Syrians seeking asylum in Belgium are Kurds from the northeast of the country, away from the epicentre of the violence.
Sweden suspends refoulement of Syrians
AFP in Le Figaro, 30 January 2012
Swedish immigration authorities announced today that they were temporarily suspending all measures of refoulement to Syria in view of the escalation of violence and absence of security while President Bachar al-Assad’s regime pursues its policy of repression. ‘The Swedish Migration Board has temporarily suspended any measure of refoulement to Syria, due to the dramatic deterioration of the security situation in the country’, says their statement.
On 16 December 2011, the board had already considered the situation sufficiently serious to authorise Sweden to raise the number of Syrians allowed entry for asylum. Swedish Migration Board statistics show that in 2011, 640 Syrians requested political asylum in Sweden, a 52 percent increase from the previous year. According to the United Nations, the repression of the revolution has resulted in at least 5,000 deaths since mid-March 2011. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, last week declared it is no longer possible to keep count of the victims.*
*Since this article was published, the UN has released a new death toll for the crisis, cited in the introduction above.
