LEBANON: A senior Christian cleric in Lebanon has called for the deportation of all Syrian refugees from the country.
The Maronite Church’s patriarch, Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, made the call in his Easter service sermon. He claimed that the estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees were “draining the state’s resources.”
Lebanon has been devastated by protracted political and economic problems. Due to the currency’s collapse, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to live in poverty, with many finding it difficult to pay for medicine and food.
There are already more than 820,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to the UN, but there may be as many as 1.5 million. They escaped the 12-year civil war that had ravaged their nation. Nearly seven million people are thought to live in Lebanon. In his Easter service sermon, Patriarch Bechara alleged that Syrian refugees were “competing with the Lebanese for their livelihood and disturbing social security”.
He called on the global community to help the Syrian refugees to return to their homeland.
Patriarch Bechara, the leader of Lebanon’s largest Christian sect, has previously advocated for the expulsion of Palestinian refugees. According to Fadel Abdul-Ghani, the director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, foreign aid was given to Syrian refugees in Lebanon rather than subsidies from the Lebanese government.
The UN and human rights organizations have repeatedly issued warnings that it is unsafe for refugees to return to Syria. They have rejected plans by the Lebanese government to begin returning refugees last year.
