Migrant workers protest in front of the Gambian consulate in Beirut shortly after the Aug. 4, 2020, port explosion. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — The advocacy group Anti-Racist Movement said in a statement Thursday that, with most of the country focused on the Beirut port explosion anniversary, the Lebanese authorities are trying to deport a detained Kenyan migrant worker and activist identified only as N.M within the next 48 hours, “fully knowing that this action is life threatening.”
Here’s what we know:
• N.M has been detained by General Security since April this year, the group said, noting that she is an asylum seeker and her life could be in danger if she goes back to Kenya.
• She was arrested on “false accusations of which she has been acquitted,” the ARM statement said; however, she still remains detained by General Security who are “actively trying to deport her on the premises of her expired residency. N.M committed no crime except for her activism for the protection of Kenyan workers in Lebanon,” the statement said.
• “The Lebanese authorities are breaking all International and National laws by bypassing the UNHCR’s legal mandate to forcibly deport a registered asylum seeker, arbitrarily detaining an innocent woman,” the statement noted.
• A spokesperson for General Security could not be reached for comment.