Obama Urged to Press Jordan on Syria Asylum Seekers
Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged U.S. President Barack Obama on the eve of his Jordan visit to press King Abdullah II to accept Palestinian refugees and other asylum seekers at the Syrian border.
"Jordan is routinely and unlawfully rejecting Palestinian refugees, single males, and undocumented people seeking asylum at its border with Syria," HRW and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic said in a statement.
HRW said while attention during Obama's visit to Jordan on Friday and Saturday will focus on the 450,000 refugees that Jordan is hosting, Amman's rejection of these categories of asylum seekers fleeing the violence should not be ignored.
"Obama should seek assurances from King Abdullah II that Jordan will not reject any asylum seekers at its border with Syria. The risks to their lives in Syria are too serious to send anyone back at the present time."
Bill Frelick, refugee program director at HRW, said Obama "should not give Jordan a free pass to force Palestinian refugees and asylum seekers back to Syria."
Jordan should recognize that everyone -- and that includes Palestinian refugees, single men, and undocumented people -- has the right not to be forcibly sent back to Syria to face the risk of death or serious harm."
In two separate trips to Jordan and Lebanon, in January and February, HRW and the Harvard Clinic interviewed more than 120 Syrian and Palestinian refugees from Syria.
They documented that, "as a matter of policy, Jordan is turning back people from Syria at its border without adequately considering the risk to them.
"Such a policy violates the international law principle of non-refoulement, which forbids governments from returning refugees and asylum seekers to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened," the statement said.
The total number of asylum seekers rejected at the border since the fighting began in Syria since March 2011 is unknown, HRW said.
Prior to the conflict in Syria, an estimated 500,000 Palestinian refugees lived there, according to the rights watchdog.
During his trip to Jordan, which is already home to home to more than two million Palestinian refugees, Obama will meet with his ally King Abdullah and visit the ancient ruins of Petra in the south.
Source: Agence France Presse
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