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Germany took in almost one million Syrians, Europe’s biggest diaspora from the ravaged country, with the bulk arriving in 2015-16 under ex-chancellor Angela Merkel
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that the end of the brutal tyranny of the Syrian dictator Assad is a great relief for many people who have suffered from torture, murder and terror. (AP file)
Germany on Monday suspended decisions on asylum requests from Syrians amid the “unclear situation” in the war-torn country after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, the interior minister said.
Germany took in almost one million Syrians, Europe’s biggest diaspora from the ravaged country, with the bulk arriving in 2015-16 under ex-chancellor Angela Merkel.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said that “the end of the brutal tyranny of the Syrian dictator Assad is a great relief for many people who have suffered from torture, murder and terror”.
“Many refugees who have found protection in Germany now finally have hope of returning to their Syrian homeland and rebuilding their country,” she said in a statement.
But she cautioned that “the situation in Syria is currently very unclear”.
“Therefore, concrete possibilities of return cannot yet be predicted at the moment and it would be unprofessional to speculate about them in such a volatile situation.”
“In view of this unclear situation,” she said, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had imposed a freeze on decisions for asylum procedures that are still ongoing “until the situation is clearer”.
The interior ministry says 974,136 people with Syrian nationality were residing in Germany.
Of these, 5,090 had been recognised as eligible for asylum, 321,444 had been granted refugee status and 329,242 had been granted subsidiary protection, a temporary stay of deportation. Tens of thousands of other cases are still pending.
German foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer pointed to the changing events and ongoing fighting in Syria.
“The fact that the Assad regime has been ended is unfortunately no guarantee of peaceful development,” he told a media briefing.
“Whether this new situation will result in new refugee movements or whether, on the contrary, if the situation stabilises, displaced persons and refugees will have the opportunity to return to their homeland in the long term, remains to be seen.”
Immigration Debate
Assad’s fall has again stoked an immigration debate in Germany, where some fear a new wave of Syrian refugees and others hope to quickly send back those already there.
Immigration has been a hot-button topic in a year that has seen a number of bloody attacks blamed on Islamists and as the country heads for elections in February.
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) reacted to Sunday’s mass rallies of Syrians celebrating Assad’s downfall by suggesting they could now go home.
“Anyone in Germany who celebrates ‘free Syria’ evidently no longer has any reason to flee,” wrote the AfD’s Alice Weidel on X. “They should return to Syria immediately.”
The centre-right opposition CDU suggested that rejected Syrian asylum-seekers should now lose so-called subsidiary protection.
“If the reason for protection no longer applies, then refugees will have to return to their home country,” CDU legislator Thorsten Frei told Welt TV.
CDU MP Jens Spahn suggested that Berlin charter flights to Syria and offer 1,000 euros to “anyone who wants to return to Syria”.
Members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) criticised the debate as inappropriate.
“To talk about a freeze of admission of Syrian refugees at this point… is populist and irresponsible,” the vice-chair of the SPD parliamentary group Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post daily.
Green party deputy Anton Hofreiter also said “it is completely unclear what will happen next in Syria”.
“Musings about changing our migration policy after the fall of Assad and taking tougher action against Syrian refugees are completely out of place,” he told the Funke media group.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – AFP)
- Location :
Berlin, Germany
