A wave of sudden and unexpected support for Bashar Al-Assad ahead of the Syrian presidential elections has sparked confusion and anger across Lebanon.
On Thursday, Syrian refugees flocked to their embassy in Beirut to cast their votes for Bashar Al-Assad’s re-election, the Syrian ruler who is internationally deemed responsible for waging a war against his own people and causing the refugee crisis.
On their way to their embassy to vote, they were intercepted and attacked by angry Lebanese protesters in several parts of Lebanon, mainly in Zouk, Jounieh, Achrafieh, and Tripoli.
Prior to that, there were multiple rallies of support for Assad, which led the leader of the Lebanese Forces (LF) Samir Geagea to express that Syrians who vote for Assad should be sent back to Syria immediately because it would show that they were not threatened by the regime.
However, despite the public shows of Assad loyalists, not all Syrian nationals in Lebanon support Assad nor wish for his reelection.
On Friday, a group of Syrians in Akkar, the northernmost part of Lebanon bordering Syria, stood their ground and protested against the Syrian regime and those who voted for Assad in the Syrian presidential elections.
In addition, it has been reported that only around 50,000 out of around 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon voted.
This led people to infer that the majority of refugees in Lebanon do not support Assad as the multiple noisy rallies of the Syrian regime loyalists made people assume.
There are also some who have shared that they were threatened into voting for Assad out of fear of being forced back to Syria.
It is to note that there have been many talks these past days that, based on the Geneva Convention of 1951, Syrian refugees voting for Assad lose de facto their refugee status.
However, Lebanon is not bound by the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, which it has never signed.
Refugee status in Lebanon is mainly “determined by the provisions of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between Lebanon and the UNHCR.”
