Austria wants to send Syrians home. Refugees and their representatives say it is too far

Lukas Gahleitner-Gertz’s refugee organization has been fielding many alarming calls from Syrians living in Austria.

This is because the country has threatened to start repatriating Syrians to their country as the rebels have overthrown the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“Many of them ask if they can be deported right away,” Gahleitner-Gertz, legal expert at Asylkoordination Österreich, told. As It Happened hosted by Nil Köksal.

“We are trying to calm people down.”

Austria is one of several European countries that have temporarily suspended asylum applications in Syria until a clearer picture emerges about the country’s political future.

Canada, which has not seen the same influx as its European counterparts, will continue to process claims as they come in, said Immigration Minister Marc Miller.

Austria vows ‘orderly return to deportations’

Germany, Britain, Italy, Croatia, Norway, Poland and Sweden have also temporarily stopped issuing decisions on asylum applications from Syrians, citing the changing situation in the war-torn country. France is considering a similar move.

Gahleitner-Gertz says that’s to be expected. He says that asylum applications must be based on facts. Right now, with the power vacuum in Syria, those are hard to come by.

But Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner took it a step further, saying on Tuesday: “I have instructed the minister to prepare a systematic plan for returns and deportations to Syria.”

Karner did not provide any further details about what this would look like or who would be affected.

Gahleitner-Gertz says there is no legal basis for mass deportation.

“It’s the kind of show that’s very symbolic to their voters, but you don’t have to do that much with the truth,” he said.

“[They’re saying,] ‘We don’t want those people. We want them to go back. We don’t want more people to come.’ And this creates an atmosphere of fear.”

That fear is evident in Austria’s Syrian communities, said Abdulkheem Alshater of the Free Syrian Community Austria, an organization that helps integrate Syrians in the country.

“A lot of people are afraid of being fired,” he told CBC about the messaging app, translated from German.

Alshater, 43, fled Homs, Syria, nine years ago after participating in protests against the Assad regime.

He says he and other Syrians in Austria are celebrating the fall of Assad, a president he says brutalized and imprisoned his own people for years, and the dismantling of the notorious Syrian prisons where many opponents of the regime were arrested and tortured.

But just because Assad is no longer in power doesn’t mean Syria is safe, he said. The country is still reeling from the effects of more than a decade of war.

He says it is still not clear who will govern, what will happen to the people who worked for the Assad regime, or what kind of politics will eventually emerge.

“Syrians will return when there is a free democracy,” he said.

Amloud Alamir, a Syrian journalist in Berlin, agrees.

She works for Amal Berlin, a news site reporting in Arabic, Ukrainian and Dari/Farsi on German urban refugees and immigrants.

He says many Syrians believe the pressure to go back is “premature and ignores the realities of Syria,” which include warring groups and their international backers with conflicting interests and ideologies.

“The fall of the Assad regime represents a major political change, and it is very important for our future as Syrians. We didn’t expect that, tears mixed with laughter. Finally, we are free from the Assad family and from this dictatorship,” he told CBC in a voice memo.

“But establishing a peaceful and democratic Syria is not easy.”

The International Refugee Committee, a humanitarian organization, is urging countries not to force Syrians to return against their will.

“Events in Syria are shocking evidence that human suffering, mass displacement and widespread killing are not the foundation of a sustainable state,” said David Miliband, president of the organisation, in a press release.

“We ask all countries where Syrians live as refugees to respect the principle of safe and voluntary return. Syria needs its people, in all their forms, but they should be the ones who choose.”

More talk than truth, says a legal expert

Gahleitner-Gertz says threats of expulsion from Austria are more rhetoric than reality.

Syrian refugees in Austria are given protection under the country’s asylum system, he says, and that cannot be taken away without hearing and legal representation.

In order to deport a person, he says, the government will have to show that the country of his birth is safe – something that is impossible given recent events.

Right now, the rebels who ousted Assad still have it supported the interim leader, and promised the security and unity of Syria. But the international community remains wary of Hayat Tahrir al-Shams (HTS), the former al-Qaeda affiliate that led the insurgency.

Alshater notes that Iran and Libya also experienced changes, and both countries ended up with repressive regimes.

“We will not allow the same thing to happen in Syria,” he said. “The West and Europe must work for a democratic and independent Syria.”

In files from Elizabeth Withey, The Canadian Press and Reuters. Interview with Lukas Gahleitner-Gertz produced by Katie Toth.