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On the edge of her burned-out tent in the Syrian refugee camp in Hanin-Minya in northern Lebanon, 38-year-old Fadia Muhammad sits wiping tears, after losing hope of finding the contents of her tent, which was supported by nylon sheets, before a terrible fire consumed the entire field.
This Syrian woman, who fled her hometown of Homs to Lebanon 8 years ago, discovered that war was haunting her after fire destroyed her tent, which housed her children.
She told Al-Jazeera Net: “The moment the fire started, I just thought about saving my children from death. I was changing the baby’s clothes, so I carried him almost naked, and took his hands to run. towards an exit. We returned in the morning and did not find my tent that melted and became like black coal. “
A few meters away, Umm Ali (43 years old), who fled Hasaka, Syria to Lebanon in 2011, and is a mother of 6 children, was standing, complaining to Al-Jazeera Net about the question: “What is our guilt to pay the price for an individual problem that has nothing to do with us? ” What is the sin of our children to escape? Flames and bullets in the middle of the night shivering with cold?
Several Lebanese citizens set fire to a Syrian refugee camp in Hanin-Al-Minya on Saturday night, following an individual dispute between a group of families from the area and Syrian workers in the camp, which resulted in the fall of several injuries.
About 380 refugees live in the camp before it burned (Al-Jazeera)At a time when local accounts are still contradictory about the background to the incident that displaced dozens of Syrian families, the Lebanese Army Command issued an official statement in which it clarified that the Intelligence Directorate arrested two Lebanese citizens and six Syrians. on Sunday due to a single problem that occurred in the town of Bahnin between young Lebanese and several Syrian workers. It soon turned into shots fired into the air by young Lebanese, who also set fire to the tents of Syrian refugees.
A witness told Al-Jazeera Net about the bitter moments the refugees lived before the fire started, when the attackers cut the electric cables of the camp and fired randomly into the air, with some of them threatening the refugees to burn any near field to which they came.
After failing to escape through the main gate, dozens of young men, women and children fled to the far wall, some of them running barefoot, seeking help on a small ladder and falling from it into the surrounding orchards by the sound of gas bottles exploding from the fire.
Among the fleeing refugees were the two boy friends, Ahmed Al-Issa and Amir Muhammad (10 years old), and they were from the Syrian city of Qamishli, with signs of fear on their faces, and Ahmed told Al-Jazeera Net : “I came to the camp to check my bicycle, but could not find it, and the assailants hit my uncle on the head. And I was afraid that the fire would reach my body before fleeing to the garden.”
Amir interrupts him, wanting to return to Syria, because he lives here in difficult conditions and without a school, and he cannot forget the “night of the terror of fire”, as he described it.
The Hanin-Minya camp is one of dozens of camps spread out in Lebanon, most of them were built randomly and in an area that does not exceed 1,500 square meters there are 86 tents inhabited by about 76 families, which means that There are 379 Syrian refugees, according to the UNHCR spokesperson. Syrian refugees in northern Lebanon Khaled Kabara.
The two women, Fadia and Umm Ali, their tents were burned, including (Al-Jazeera)condemnation
The refugee camp fire sparked widespread condemnation of Lebanon at both the official and popular levels, especially as North Lebanon is known as an incubation environment for Syrian refugees and their cause, and has already been described by many as condemned, racist. and criminal, in addition to demanding reprisals for the aggressors.
The Minister of Social Affairs, Ramzi al-Musharrafiya, also contacted the Minister of Defense, Zeina Aker, highlighting the ministry’s concern for the safety of the refugees and the need to address the causes and repercussions of the accident and hold accountable the perpetrators.
The supervisor gave his directives to the response team, which coordinated local authorities, security authorities and international organizations, and made sure that none of the families slept in the open and without shelter, according to the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For his part, the Grand Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Abd al-Latif Derian, condemned the burning of the camp for displaced Syrians in the town of Bhanin-Minya, describing what happened as “an atrocious crime that deserves severe punishment for part of those who carried out this shameful act against humanity. “
Crisis wallpapers
This is not the first time that Syrian refugees have been abused and expelled from their places of residence, and the latest incident was a month ago at the end of November, when some 270 Syrian families left the mountainous city of Bcharre in the north of the Lebanon, after an incident triggered the murder of a young Lebanese at the hands of a refugee. Syrian tension that led a group of young people from the region to expel the Syrian residents there, in response to the crime.
The two children Ahmed and Amir escaped from the camp when the fire broke out (Al-Jazeera)In the context, Nasser Yassin, a professor at the American University interested in the issue of refugees, considers that the Hanin-Minya camp fire was neither surprising nor new, and the paradox is the scale of the aggressiveness of the incident. In Lebanon.
In a statement to Al-Jazeera Net, Yassin links what Syrian refugees are exposed to with 3 basic factors:
First, the refugee in Lebanon has become a permissible person, in light of the escalation of hate speech for more than two years and some groups and officials who demand the departure of Syrians, and some hold them responsible for the crises as they constitute additional pressure on Lebanese society with the presence of at least one million Syrian refugees.
Second, the absence of the Lebanese state to fully address the refugee file for 9 years, which led to the creation of a kind of collective laws that a group of the host community practices against refugees without any legal impediment.
Thirdly, the economic and life crisis in Lebanon, which increased the tension between the Lebanese and Syrian societies, mainly because refugees reside in the poorest areas, due to the ease of living in them illegally, that increases tensions by sharing the same suffering.
Yassin points out that around 90% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live below the poverty line, and the amount of aid that reaches them is not enough to cover their minimum needs, and the problem is that most of them do not they enjoy legal protection, as there are around 70% of the refugees who do not have official residence papers, either because they have sought refuge. They fled illegally, or because they did not renew their residence because they did not have the cost of their expenses.
These factors combined and others, according to Yassin, established a terrain for violence, and had it not been for the solidarity of a large group of Lebanese with the refugees, the retaliation would have taken on a more violent pace, which he fears would spread with the repercussions. of the great collapse that plagues Lebanon.
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