19/06/2008

In the World Refugee Day on June 20, we stand and with us all the honorable and jurists in Lebanon ashamed in front of our fellow human beings who have been forced by the circumstances to resort to our country, which did not provide them -and still- with humanitarian conditions that they deserve, according to international covenants and the Bill of Rights starting from the Palestinians to Iraqis and Sudanese.

The Palestinians who have been denied, since the beginning of their refuge in Lebanon in 1948, of civil rights that the latest successive governments recently started to release some of the very simple and bashfully, were celebrating one year ago Refugee Day while they were themselves refugees for the second time from their camp of Nahr el-Bared to Beddawi, Beirut and the Southern camps, and in schools, and they are still inspite of the clashes that ended less than a year ago on massive destruction and new displacement. The Lebanese government continued its injustice against them when it long delayed the start of the reconstruction of their camp as it promised immediately after the battles ended and secure the return of the families. But the two promises were not fulfilled till now inspite of the return of most of them, nevertheless, they have returned to rest on the rubble without insuring alternatives in the waiting time for Vienna Conference to be organized to secure funding for reconstruction meaning that their fate won't be better than the fate of the Lebanese who are now awaiting the reconstruction of their homes that were destroyed during July aggression two years ago.

We, at the Khiam Center, call to make use of what happened in Nahr el-Bared and reconstruction, which the government claims to support although it won't be more better, more humane and respectful to them, but we demand that the reconstruction process would be accompanied by giving the Palestinians their civil rights and treating them as human beings like the treatment of refugees in other countries that apply international conventions. It's not sufficient that the government permit to introduce cement and building materials to camps, it is required to reintegrate them into the economic movement and unions by allowing them to work, housing and property to serve the interest of Lebanon.
The experience of Nahr el-Bared, and currently Ein el-Hilweh camp, is only a reflection of the government's unfair policy and the dispossession against the Palestinians that engenders extremism, crime and terrorism.

The Iraqi refugees are not better off than the Palestinians when the security services forced them, when while arrested entering illegally, to return to Iraq in contravention of international conventions. But we, while we welcome the policy pursued by the subsequent internal security forces for the settlement of their legal situations in cooperation with the High Commission for Refugees, we call for the support of these on the social, health and other psychological aspects. And like them are the Sudanese who some of them die in detention centers and prisons without trial because their presence is illegal in Lebanon.

On the World Refugee Day, we mention the issue of the Palestinian prisoner Youssef Chaaban detained in Roumieh prison since 15 years in contravention of all humanitarian laws, and that the continuation of his arrest is a odium disgrace on the face of the Lebanese judiciary and the Lebanese State.

On the World Refugee Day, we pay tribute to all forcibly refugees to other countries, especially the Palestinian refugees and foreign workers.