BALADI NEWS
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are being forced to tear down their own homes in the face of an aggressive new campaign by the Lebanese authorities to pressure refugees into returning home, the Guardian newspaper wrote.
In the border town of Arsal, informal settlements that house 55,000 refugees were the scene of frantic activity under the hot summer sun on Friday as young men took apart the breeze-block homes with pickaxes, hammers and drills, covering the ground in rubble and dust, the newspaper indicated.
“We don’t have anywhere else to live and there is no one to help us,” 84-year-old Rasmeera Raad said between sobs as she sat with her two disabled adult daughters in a makeshift mosque near the site of their old house.
Local officials have decided to implement a military decree demanding the demolition of Syrian concrete structures more than 1 meter high before a 1 July deadline. Fearing that the army will come with bulldozers and raze the camps to the ground, families have decided to carry out the work themselves in order to save the few possessions they own, the Guardian pointed out.
The British charity Edinburgh Direct Aid (EDA), as well as the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), are on the ground helping to construct and move families into new wood and tarpaulin shelters, but time was running out before the Monday deadline and the evictions have stretched aid groups’ financial resources.
“I cried when we got the order to demolish our home,” said a 47-year-old father of five, Mohamed al-Qasem, who lost his leg after a shelling attack in Syria.
The ordered demolition in Arsal has left 5,000 families and as many as 15,000 children homeless again, according to Save the Children, forced to relive the traumatic experience of sleeping outside or in overcrowded tents.