Human Rights Groups Slam UK for Telling Asylum-Seeker Syria Is Safe

Human rights campaigners said Sunday that they were furious over a British Home Office decision that a Syrian asylum seeker who fled forced conscription in that country would be unlikely to experience persecution or harm if he returned home. The man, now 25, fled Syria in 2017 when he was faced with the prospect of being drafted into the Syrian army to fight for Bashar Assad’s regime. In May 2020 he entered the UK. In December of last year, the UK government sent him a letter saying, “It is not accepted … you will face a risk of persecution or real risk of serious harm [on return to Syria] … due to your imputed political opinion as a draft evader.” He says he is appealing the decision. Human rights groups say the decision marks a change in British policy that is not justified by any major improvement in the situation on the ground in Syria, which remains extremely volatile. “It’s a shift from the UK and an extremely dangerous one and should be reversed immediately,” Amnesty International UK Campaigns Manager Kristyan Benedict wrote on Sunday in a message on Twitter. “Syrian security forces have subjected Syrians who returned home after seeking refuge abroad to detention, disappearance and torture, including sexual violence,” he said. Benedict said his organization last year documented “a catalogue of horrific violations committed by Syrian intelligence officers against 66 returnees, including 13 children.” Likewise, Human Rights Watch slammed the Home Office’s decision. It published a report in October saying that returnees faced “grave human rights abuses and persecution at the hands of [the Syrian regime] and affiliated militias, including torture, extrajudicial killings, and kidnappings.”