A Lebanese municipality in the northern Bekaa region has imposed discriminatory restrictions on Syrian refugees relating to wages and movement, activists said Thursday.
The Ras Baalbek municipality set a very low wage for Syrian workers that should not be exceeded, and imposed a similar restriction on the wages of female domestic workers exclusively, in addition to ban Syrians from receiving people at home.
The municipality circular set the wages of a Syrian worker for an 8-hour work at 40,000 Lebanese pounds, which is less than two dollars per day, according to the prevailing exchange rate, where one dollar approached the level of 22 thousand pounds.
As for Syrian domestic workers, their wages, according to the second article of the circular, should not exceed 10,000 pounds per hour, or about half a dollar.
Activists and human rights activists who reviewed the latest circular denounced the abhorrent racist measures stipulated in it, noting that Ras Baalbek preferred to catch up with other Lebanese municipalities that imposed restrictions on Syrians that conflict with the most basic human rights.
The municipality also imposed on the Syrians to refrain from receiving guests from outside Ras Baalbek in their homes at night, and to abide by a curfew that applies specifically to them from seven in the evening until six in the morning of the next day, until further notice.
The circular threatened those who did not comply with its content to be "under penalty of responsibility."
Lebanon hosts more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees.
HRW accused Lebanon – which is embroiled in economic and political crises - of pursuing an "aggressive returns agenda", with decrees to make refugees' lives difficult, along with summary deportations.
Lebanese authorities have denied returning refugees face torture and reprisals, with Bashar al Assad saying millions were being intimidated to stay in host countries that were benefiting from international aid for them, Reuters reported in October.
Syria's war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions since it began with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests in 2011.
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