Denmark wants to send Syrian asylum-seekers home

FOR MORE than a year, Denmark has been trying to send people back to Syria. It says it will only send back those who hail from in or around Damascus, the Syrian capital. That part of the country, which is firmly in the grip of President Bashar al-Assad, has seen no fighting for three years. Therefore, the left-wing Danish government argues, it is now safe for people to return. Syria experts disagree. Human Rights Watch, an NGO, says that Syrians who go back are likely to be locked up or tortured. The regime might see the fact that they fled the country in the first place as evidence of disloyalty, and it has often murdered people it suspects of that. Yet Denmark has doubled down on its decision. Since taking office in 2019, the government has reviewed the cases of more than 600 of the 33,000 Syrian refugees in the country. It removed “temporary protection” status from more than 200 of them, including nearly 100 this year. Another 410 are in jeopardy.