A quick return to Syria would be dangerous

End of Assad’s rule

Pro asylum: A quick return to Syria would be dangerous

Updated 12/10/2024Reading time: 2 min.

Some refugees are returning from Turkey to their home country of Syria. Others prefer to wait because the situation is still unstable. (Source: Metin Yoksu/AP/dpa/dpa-bilder)

While freed political prisoners in Syria are returning to their families, deportations are being discussed in this country. This is necessary, some say. Others see it as cynical.

The fact that some politicians want to encourage Syrian refugees to leave the country shortly after the fall of long-term ruler Bashar al-Assad in Syria has met with criticism from human rights groups and those affected. “Syria remains an unstable country,” emphasizes the organization Pro Asyl. Armed groups currently control large parts of Syria. There was a lack of functioning government structures and a secure infrastructure.

“Returning under these conditions is risky and even life-threatening,” says pro-asylum spokesman Tareq Alaows. Refugees from Syria living in Germany are unsettled by the cynical “knee-jerk debates about returns and deportations”.

Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) and several AfD politicians, among others, had declared that Syrian refugees should now leave Germany quickly. The Union parliamentary group’s domestic policy spokesman, Alexander Throm (CDU), said: “We have fulfilled our obligations to protect the Syrians – the next priority must be return.”

The FDP domestic politician, Ann-Veruschka Jurisch, explained that if the conditions in Syria change for the better, hundreds of thousands of protection titles of Syrians would probably have to be checked individually. However, the cooperation between the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), which checks the protection title, and the local immigration authorities, which revoke the residence permit, is poor when it comes to digitalization.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior must now present plans on how it intends to deal with the large number of expected cases. But the Union, which led this ministry for many years before the 2021 federal election, “should not now be too big and demand that Syrians leave the country quickly without talking about how.”