UN experts urge Australia to return Syrian citizens

SYDNEY: UN human rights experts have asked Australia to repatriate 46 of its citizens from Syrian detention camps, citing “deepest disquiet” over the conditions of women and children.

In a letter made public Sunday, a group of ten UN special rapporteurs said, “The only legal and humane response” is death.

According to UN experts, the situation for Australian citizens detained in the Al-Hol and Roj camps is “uncertain and sordid.”

“Some of the women may have been coerced or trafficked into Syria,” they wrote.

A complex situation could not justify Canberra’s “complete lack of steps” to remedy the “sheer obliteration of the rights of Australian citizens resulting from their arbitrary deprivation of liberty.”

The UN experts’ letter “reiterates and underscores what we have been telling the government for years,” said Sydney man Kamalle Dabboussy, whose daughter Mariam and her three children are in the Roj camp.

He said his Australian relatives in the Syrian camps continue to send sporadic, “gut-wrenching” messages.

Dabboussy said the families feared for the camps’ children’s welfare.

“The situation is dire both from a physical and mental health perspective,” he said.

He accused Australia of “playing politics with women and children’s lives” by not repatriating them.

Case by case

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Sunday the government was discussing it, but she would not say whether Australians in Syria were being repatriated or not.

The kids were “Australians in a bad situation because their parents went to war zones”, she told the ABC.

Repatriation from Syria was considered on a case-by-case basis, according to Australia’s UN representative Amanda Gorely, who noted Canberra had brought home all known unaccompanied minors from Syria in 2019.

That the Australian government’s human rights obligations do not extend to the conditions in northeast Syria’s camps, she said.

Save the Children Australia’s acting CEO, Mat Tinkler, said the organisation “fears an Australian child will die if left to languish in Syria.”

He said recent government repatriations of German, Swedish, and Dutch citizens proved it.

In 2019, at least 11 Syrian women told the Australian government they would accept strict terrorism control orders if allowed to return with their kids.

These orders impose a curfew and reporting requirements.

The government ignored the offer.

Also Read

“Powerful” missile strikes Lviv, Ukraine says

Five "powerful" Russian missiles hit Lviv on Monday, the city's mayor said....