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Danish authorities criticised for defying own report on Syrian asylum claims

Immigration authorities in Denmark sometimes rule in contradiction of their own report on security in Syria when assessing the asylum claims of refugees, critics say.

Published: 15 November 2022 10:39 CET
Danish authorities criticised for defying own report on Syrian asylum claims
People demonstrate against deportation of Syrians by Denmark in 2021. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

Syrian refugees whose residency in Denmark is revoked because it is deemed safe for them to return to the Damascus area are still at risk of persecution and attacks if they travel home, according to critics of Danish Immigration Service rulings on asylum cases.

Decisions made by the Danish Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) appear in some cases to be at odds with the immigration authorities’ own report on the security situation in the Middle Eastern country, according to a report by public service broadcaster DR.

The Danish Immigration Service in May released a report detailing the risks that former refugees returning to Syria face — “authorities who continue to arrest, detain, interrogate, torture, extort and kill Syrian refugees,” DR writes.

An EU report published in September and reviewed by the Immigration Service likewise concludes that repatriated Syrians are subjected to interrogation, arrests, rape and torture.

Denmark’s government maintains that the situation in Syria and especially around Damascus has improved enough for refugees to be sent home in some cases.

The Danish Refugee Council, a nonprofit advocacy and humanitarian group, argues that immigration authorities are not sufficiently taking the reports into account in deciding whether to renew Syrian refugees’ residence permits. 

The Immigration Service told DR that its report is used as background information when cases are processed.

The Refugee Appeals Board (Flygtningenævnet) — the part of the Danish Immigration Service that serves as its appeal body — told DR it routinely refers to the report in its decisions.

The Refugee Appeals Board has reversed Immigration Service’s decision to remove Syrian refugees in 49 out of 70 cases that have surfaced between May and September, DR writes. 

READ ALSO: Denmark reverses residence decisions for hundreds of Syrian refugees

“This means that 21 cases at the Refugee Appeals Board will not be overturned despite the report of the Danish Immigration Service and the report from the EU,” Eva Singer, head of asylum at the Danish Refugee Council, told DR.

“This corresponds to 30 percent of the cases, and these are refugees who may also be at risk if they are sent back to Syria. We cannot see how they differ from the others. As such, the practice at the Refugee Appeals Board is not clear,” she said.

The Refugee Appeals Board told DR that approval of some appeals and rejection of others “is not an expression of unclear practice”.

“In all cases, the Refugee Appeals Board conducts a concrete and individual assessment,” to assess whether the applicant “risks persecution or abuse,” it said.

“General conditions” in Damascus and the surrounding region are not considered in isolation to be cause for granting or extending asylum, it said.

Denmark and Hungary are the only EU countries which currently deem it safe to return Syrian refugees.

Since Denmark doesn’t have a repatriation agreement with Syria, refugees whose status is revoked are frequently moved indefinitely to detention facilities termed ‘deportation centres’, where conditions have been strongly criticised.

READ MORE: Danish agency sent letters about deportation to refugee children 

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Will Denmark follow the UK with law sending asylum seekers to Rwanda?

The British parliament on Monday night passed a law allowing it to deport people seeking asylum to Rwanda, a country where Denmark has harboured ambitions of opening its own asylum centre.

Published: 23 April 2024 15:16 CEST
Will Denmark follow the UK with law sending asylum seekers to Rwanda?

The adoption of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation bill does not have any immediate impact on the plans of the Danish government to set up an asylum centre in the African country, according to Immigration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek.

“It has no direct [effect] because we are working together with other EU countries on a combined solution so that the people smuggling that currently happens across the Mediterranean will be avoided,” Bek said to newswire Ritzau.

The Danish minister called the adoption of the divisive law by the British parliament “enormously positive”.

The first asylum seekers could be flown to Rwanda by UK authorities in July, according to reports by international media including Reuters and the Guardian.

An offshore asylum centre has long been a core immigration policy of Bek’s Social Democratic party. When in office as a minority government, the Social Democrats launched discussions with Rwanda with a view to eventually transferring people seeking asylum in Denmark to reception centres outside the European Union while their requests were processed.

After the party stayed in government as part of a centrist coalition after the 2022 election, the plans were put on hold in favour of establishing a reception centre outside Europe “in cooperation with the EU or a number of other countries”, Bek said at the time.

READ ALSO: Denmark suspends asylum centre talks with Rwanda

The centrist Moderate party, another of the partners in the coalition government, opposes a Danish asylum facility in Rwanda.

“But it’s clear that this is a direction that the whole Western world is moving in. Whether you go to the United States, Great Britain, Canada or Australia, you find they want to stop the way the asylum system works and help people with the greatest need first,” he said.

An EU agreement on the issue will not be forthcoming within the next three months, Bek said.

But the Danish minister said he expects the topic of the asylum system and facilities outside the EU to be on the agenda for the EU parliament following June’s EU elections.

The UK law was eventually passed by parliament despite the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom having earlier ruled it would be illegal, arguing Rwanda may not be able to guarantee the human rights of the deported persons. The bill passed by the parliament on Monday night forces judges to consider Rwanda a safe country in this regard.

Bek said he preferred Denmark to be part of an EU agreement rather than following the UK’s example with a national law.

“A European solution solves more things than a purely Danish one,” he told Ritzau.

“We would be able to get a solution to our risk of large and spontaneous asylum, but we would not solve the actual problem [with a Danish law], which is that thousands of people die in the Mediterranean each year,” he said.

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