Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil. (Credit: Photo taken from Bassil's X account)
BEIRUT — The head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Gebran Bassil, called on Monday for the deportation of Syrian migrants who "violate Lebanese and international law."
In a two-minute video posted on X, Bassil said that the FPM had presented a series of measures meant to address the presence of Syrian migrants in Lebanon, whom some groups have blamed for crime and economic issues.
Bassil and his party proposed the following measures:
• Deporting Syrian migrants currently detained in Lebanese prisons.
• Deporting Syrians who enter the border through illegal crossing points or who leave and re-enter Lebanon through legal points having previously acquired refugee status.
• Deporting any Syrian laborer who violates the labor law.
• Removing the status of "displaced person" and halting assistance to Syrians deemed to fall outside the conditions and criteria defining displacement.
• Expelling Syrians who break municipal law.
Lebanon is the country with the highest population of refugees per capita in the world, hosting an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees who fled the war in Syria, which has killed more than half a million people. In Syria in 2023, 4,360 people, including combatants and civilians were killed in the conflict, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The murder of the Lebanese Forces' Jbeil district office head Pascal Sleiman last week ago has heightened tensions in Lebanon, with an upsurge in verbal and physical violence against Syrian nationals and their representatives.