Lebanese General Security Thursday returned 787 Syrian refugees to their home country, a statement from the agency said.
Syrians who had registered with General Security saying that they wished to return home gathered at meeting points across the country at 6 a.m. Thursday morning and crossed into Syrian territory via the Masnaa, Al-Qaa, , Abbouddieh and Zamrani border crossings, according to the Lebanese Daily Star.
They were met on the other side by buses provided by the Syrian authorities.
General Security has been registering refugees willing to return to Syria since May 2018.
The agency announced in late March that 170,000 Syrian refugees had returned since December 2017, including those whose journeys were organized by General Security and those who had traveled back on their own.
The return of refugees is a politically divisive topic in Lebanon. President Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah and their allies are calling for the immediate return of Syrians to their country, while Prime Minister Saad Hariri's Future Movement and its allies insist that a political solution to the eight-year war there must be found first, the Daily Star reported.
Forcibly Deported
Amnesty International said Tuesday that Lebanon had "forcibly deported" nearly 2,500 Syrian refugees back to their war-torn homeland since May, calling on authorities to end the expulsions.
Amnesty cited data from Lebanon's General Security agency and the Lebanese government showing that some 2,447 Syrians had been expelled between mid-May and August 9, the rights group said in a statement.
General Security on May 13 started implementing an order from Lebanon's Higher Defence Council to deport refugees who had entered the country illegally after April 2019, it said.
It was not immediately clear whether all those expelled had entered illegally.
"We urge the Lebanese authorities to stop these deportations as a matter of urgency," said Amnesty's Middle East Research Director, Lynn Maalouf.
Any attempt to forcibly return refugees is "a clear violation of Lebanon's non-refoulement obligations", she said.
Non-refoulement is a principle of international law that bars governments from deporting people to countries where they would face persecution.
The Mediterranean country of around 4.5 million people says it hosts some 1.5 million Syrians, of which nearly a million are UN-registered refugees.
Lebanese politicians routinely blame the country's economic and other woes on Syrian refugees and the government has ratcheted up the pressure to send them back.
Rights groups have decried measures to make the lives of refugees increasingly difficult.
Since June, more than 3,600 Syrian families have seen their shelters demolished in the eastern region of Arsal, according to local authorities.
Homes made of anything other than timber and plastic sheeting are not allowed.
Earlier this month, the army destroyed a further 350 structures in the north of the country and arrested dozens of people for lacking residency documents, humanitarian groups said.
The labour ministry, meanwhile, is cracking down on foreign workers without a permit, a move activists say largely targets Syrians.
Eight years of war in Syria have killed 560,000 people and driven half the pre-war population of 22 million from their homes, including more than 6 million as refugees to neighbouring countries.
Zaman Al Wasl, Agencies
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