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Norway marks three years of war in Syria

Norway's foreign minister will on Friday evening lead a candlelit vigil from the roof of Oslo's Opera House to mark three years since the start of the Syrian civil war, a conflict which has displaced 40 percent of the population and left more than 146,000 people dead.

Published: 14 March 2014 15:55 CET

Norway marks three years of war in Syria

A Syrian child whose image is being used in Norway's With Syria campaign. Photo: Facebook

Børge Brende will be joined by representatives from Amnesty International Norway, Norwegian People's Aid, Save the Children and the Red Cross, as well as other agencies, to mark three years since the Syrian regime launched its crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The event, which will take place simultaneously with events in Bergen, Trondheim, Kristiansand, Skien and Arendal, is part of the international #WithSyria campaign, with vigils planned across Europe and around the world.

Since clashes in March 2011 the crisis has descended into a civil war between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and a divided opposition which includes both citizen protesters and extremist foreign fighters.

While the UN has stopped updating its death toll, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Thursday said more than 146,000 people have now been killed.

On Friday morning Bård Vegard Solhjell, the head of Norway's Socialist Left party, proposed in parliament that Norway offer to increase the number of Syrian refugees it is accepting from 1,000 to 5,000.

There was quite broad support when we proposed 1,000, and I think it is evident that we should now accept more," he said. "We are now facing a war that's going to be a long one, and we in Norway have the financial ability to help."

Brende will travel to the Middle East on Monday, visiting Israel, the Palestinian territories Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, as part of preparations for a donor conference for the Palestinian territories in June.

in Jordan and Lebanon he is scheduled to hold talks on Syria on how to best look after the refugees these two countries have accepted.

The Save the Children-led campaign has achieved widespread support with more than 2,000 people saying they will attend the vigil on Facebook.

Here you can view a gallery of vigils from around the world:

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Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021.

Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. Photo: Thibault Savary / AFP

Alkale, who until recently ran his own small transportation company in Denmark, found out in March he wasn’t allowed to stay in the Scandinavian country where he has lived as a refugee since 2014, as Copenhagen now considers it safe for Syrians to return to Damascus.

His wife and three of his four children were also affected by the decision taken by Danish authorities.

Once the ruling was confirmed on appeal in late September — like 40 percent of some 200 other cases examined so far — Alkale and his family were ordered to leave.

READ ALSO: Danish refugee board overturns decisions to send home Syrians

They were told that if they didn’t go voluntarily, they would be placed in a detention centre.

The family has refused to leave.

Normally they would have been deported by now, but since Copenhagen has no diplomatic relations with Damascus, they can’t be. And so they wait.

Days and weeks go by without any news from the authorities.

In the meantime, the family has been stripped of their rights in Denmark.

Alkale can’t sleep, his eyes riveted on his phone as he keeps checking his messages.

“What will become of me now?” the 51-year-old asks.

“Everything is off. The kids aren’t going to school, and I don’t have work,” he says, the despair visible on his weary face as he sits in the living room of the home he refurbished himself in the small village of Lundby, an hour-and-a-half’s drive south of Copenhagen.

“All this so people will get annoyed enough to leave Denmark.”

For him, returning to Syria means certain death.

“I can’t go back, I’m wanted,” he tells AFP.

And yet, he has no way to earn a living here.

“As a foreigner staying illegally in Denmark, your rights are very limited,” notes his lawyer Niels-Erik Hansen, who has applied for new residency permits for the family.

In mid-2020, Denmark became the first European Union country to re-examine the cases of about 500 Syrians from Damascus, which is under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, saying “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit”.

The decision was later widened to include the neighbouring region of Rif Dimashq.

Despite a wave of Danish and international criticism, the Social Democratic government — which has pursued one of Europe’s toughest immigration policies — has refused to budge.

READ ALSO:

The Alkale family is considering leaving for another European country, even though they risk being sent back to Denmark.

Alkale’s oldest child was already over the age of 18 when they arrived in Denmark and therefore has her own residency permit, currently under review.

Of the three other children, only the youngest, 10-year-old Rawan, still has the carefree ways of a child.

Majed, 14, says he’s “bummed”, while Said, 17, who was studying to prepare for professional chef school, says he now has no idea what his future holds.

Only a handful of Syrians have so far been placed in detention centres, regularly criticised for poor sanitary conditions.

Asmaa al-Natour and her husband Omar are among the few.

They live in the Sjælsmark camp, a former army barracks surrounded by barbed wire and run by the prisons system since late October.

“This centre should disappear, it’s not good for humans, or even for animals. There are even rats,” says al-Natour.

READ ALSO:

The couple, who have two sons aged 21 and 25, arrived in Denmark in 2014.

“My husband and I opened a shop selling Arabic products, it was going well. Then I decided to resume my studies, but now everything has just stopped,” says al-Natour, who “just wants to get (her) life back.”

“Going back to Syria means going to prison, or even death, since we’re opposed to Bashar al-Assad. He’s a criminal.”

Niels-Erik Hansen, who also represents this couple, says his clients are being “held hostage by the Danish authorities.”

The government is trying “to spread the message that ‘in Denmark, we almost deport to Syria’,” he says.

Amnesty International recently criticised Syrian security forces’ use of violence against dozens of refugees who returned home.

Danish authorities meanwhile insist it’s safe for Syrians to go back.

“If you aren’t personally persecuted … there haven’t been acts of war in Damascus for several years now. And that is why it is possible for some to go back,” the government’s spokesman for migration, Rasmus Stoklund, tells AFP.

Some 35,500 Syrians currently live in Denmark, more than half of whom arrived in 2015, according to official statistics.

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