When Rawan Bertawi, a 22-year-old Syrian refugee living in Denmark, reported for duty at the warehouse of a cosmetics company in mid-December, she discovered that her keycard was not working. She felt that something was wrong.
Her nervous manager called her to his office and showed her an email he had just received from the Danish Immigration Service: her refugee status – along with her right to work – had been revoked and she would have to leave the country.
Ms. Bertawi and her family are among the dozens of Syrian refugees who have been stripped of their residence permits by Denmark and who are forced to return to their war-torn country because the Danish government now considers Damascus – where they previously lived – safe. Human rights groups dispute the claim that every part of Syria is safe from returnees.
But since Denmark severed formal diplomatic relations with Syria at the start of the civil war a decade ago, it cannot deport Syrians. Instead, it places those who no longer have legal status in removal camps, a policy that aid groups say aims to pressure Syrians to return to Syria voluntarily.
“This is ruining human lives,” said Ms Bertawi, who went to Denmark in 2015 when she was 15. do we say we should go? “