The Palestinian Organization for Human Rights ‘PHRO’ confirmed, in an appeal considered as a notification for the Public Prosecution Discriminatory in Lebanon, the intersection of a number of information and complaints about armed professional robbery gangs who exploit the vulnerability position of Palestinian and Syrian refugees from Syria, and robbing on their way to travel or to carry out official transactions, after traveling in small buses (vans).
Pointing out that reasons for the growth of this phenomenon related to the fear of refugees from Syria, and especially the Palestinian refugees, from detention if they complain against the police stations due to not having residency by public security.
In addition, refugees fear of the possibility if those gangs knew and abuse them if they complain, especially when the looting taking place in the area between the Kuwaiti Embassy roundabout and the southern suburbs, because they will have to make a complaint at the police station located inside the southern suburbs.
The organization noting that failure to resolve the situation of refugees from Syria in general, and the Palestinian refugees from Syria in particular, in terms of giving them the right to reside as refugees from a war zone, as provided by international humanitarian law, make them in a vulnerability position and vulnerable to exploitation and permanent fear, which would forces them to stop heading to the Lebanese official authorities with jurisdiction: judicial and / or security, which helps these gangs in impunity.
The human rights organization stresses on the fear that there will be cases of harassment or sexual abuse or rape against girls and women, by those gangs, asserting that the robbed girls and women stop filing complaints at the official authorities, or in front of human rights and civic organizations not only for fear of those gangs to know their complaints, but because of social traditions and customs, and ashamed to talk about their experiences.
The organization concludes its statement inviting the security authorities to immediately intervene to prosecute the perpetrators of looting, stressing the need to settle the legal status of refugees across to recognize them as refugees and their right to gain legitimate residency, without incapacitating conditions contrary to the nature of their status as refugees, which contributes to the reduction of vulnerability process.
The organization also called the international community to open the way for refugees from Syria, and the Palestinians of them, especially because of the compound that suffer from vulnerability, to move to a second country that provides them protection and all refugees’ requirements.