Businesses run by Syrian nationals sealed off in Akkar, May 9, 2024. (Credit: Michel Hallak/L'Orient-Le Jour)
General Security patrols on Thursday raided a number of businesses run and operated by Syrian nationals "in violation of the law on work and residence" in several localities of Akkar, North Lebanon, our correspondent in the region, Michel Hallak, reported.
According to our correspondent, seven businesses were closed, and their owners were arrested. The arrested owners are being held in custody while the relevant judicial authorities determine the appropriate course of action.
Security sources indicated to our correspondent that this operation will continue and gradually cover the whole of Akkar.
The patrols visited the villages of Halba, Walbira, Wadi Khaled (on the border with Syria), Rahbeh, Meshmesh, Harrar, Kawashra, and Akkar al-Atika. They also sealed businesses belonging to Syrian nationals.
Several "voluntary return" convoys were organized between 2018 and 2022, with the aim of "helping" Syrians, hundreds of thousands of whom have taken refuge in Lebanon since the start of the war in their country in 2011, to return home. This procedure has often been criticized by international organizations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Amnesty International, who see it as a disguised expulsion. The last of these convoys, organized on Nov. 5, 2022, attracted just a few hundred refugees, whereas the Lebanese government was aiming, at the time, to ensure the return home of 15,000 Syrians per month.
The assassination in April of Pascal Sleiman, head of the Jbeil regional office of the Lebanese Forces party, by a Syrian gang, according to the Lebanese Army, has led to an upsurge in xenophobic acts against Syrians in Lebanon. Several acts of aggression and violence against Syrians have been reported in recent weeks.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
