Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Nearly 40 Palestinian refugees died
between January and November.
Two brothers died when militiamen
fired on refugees near Al Karamah
hospital in late January. That same
F
week, masked gunmen wearing
Ministry of Interior uniforms attacked
several women and abducted 27 Palestinians in
Baghdad, firing at a UNHCR rented building in the process.
In February, there were 31 attacks against Palestinian
refugees and 8 died after unknown assailants attacked
them. Palestinian sources also reported the abduction
of at least 15 refugees by insurgents and U.S. troops in
different incidents. Two of the abductees returned, two
died of torture, and the rest remained missing. Refugees
reported that gunmen frequently raided their homes to
attack and rob them. In March, Shi’a gunmen abducted
a refugee in front of his children and killed him. As part
of the Baghdad Security Plan or “surge,” Multi-National
Forces in Iraq (MNF-I) and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)
raided the Palestinian district of al-Baladiyat, shooting
and killing a Palestinian. In June, unknown assailants
abducted, tortured, and killed a Palestinian lawyer defending
four Palestinian detainees. In August, gunmen,
allegedly from the Mahdi Army, abducted, tortured, and
killed a Palestinian taxi-driver.
After Iranian agents assassinated 4 of Ahwazi Iranians,
around 100 of them fled to Trebil on the Iraqi Jordanian
border. Unknown agents kidnapped Syrian refugees because
of their Baathist affiliations.
In January, militiamen abducted four Syrian refugees
from their homes.
Although Iraq was not party to the 1951 Convention
relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol,
the 1971 Refugee Act prohibited refoulement. The northern
governorates had no status determination procedure, so
UNHCR registered asylum seekers.
A still-valid Coaltion Provisional Authority order
assigned the Ministry of Displacement and Migration responsibility
for recognized refugees. The Permanent Committee
for Refugee Affairs, established under the 1971 Refugee Act
and reactivated in 2005 lacked the capacity to determine
refugee status, which left UNHCR in charge of the procedure.
The Committee disputed the status of certain refugee groups,
such as the Syrian Arabs.
U.S. troops protected the Iranian Mujahideen Al
Khalq at Camp Ashraf outside Baghdad, after the U.S. Defense
Secretary declared them protected persons under the
Fourth Geneva Convention.
Detention and Access to Courts MNF-I and
ISF arrested and detained at least 100 refugees for alleged
terrorism and insurgency, often without charges or judicial
review. UNHCR often did not have access to detainees or to
information about their conditions, but received reports of
serious abuses and torture, which authorities
denied. The International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
had access to MNF-I detainees.
MNF-I and ISF detained at
least eight Syrian refugees but released
four. As of April 2008, eight
Syrian refugees remained in detention, but it was not clear
which force held them.
In mid-January, Iraqi security forces broke into two
UNHCR buildings that housed Palestinians and arrested 30
men, whom they later released. Later that month, gunmen in
police uniforms seized 17 Palestinians from another UNHCR
building in Al Batawyen, central Baghdad. That same day,
Iraqi security forces detained 13 Palestinians in the eastern
Baghdad district of Al Amin.
ISF and MNF-I arrested 60 Palestinians during a
March raid in al-Baladiyat, after which they released all
but 4 men. As of mid-August, all four remained in prison
without trial or charges.
Authorities did not issue any identity cards to refugees
and asylum seekers during the year, but because refugees
had access to the Public Distribution System (PDS) their
PDS cards doubled as identity cards. Palestinian families
had to appear before the Department of Residency every
one to three months to renew their registration and the
staff occasionally confiscated their documents. Refugees
in central and southern Iraq holding identity cards issued
by the former regime could not renew them once
they expired. Of the three Kurdish governorates, Dahuk
and Erbil required refugees to hold renewable residency
permits, but complying with the 1971 Refugee Act, Sulaymaniyah
did not.
Freedom of Movement
and Residence Although
there were no legal restrictions on
refugees’ freedom of movement
or choice of residence, the general
lawlessness, physical attacks, and arbitrary
detention restricted refugees’
movement in southern and central Iraq especially Palestinians
without valid identification. In the wake of the March
raid on Al Baladiyat, 41 Palestinians fled to the border and
reported that ISF had thrown out their furniture and ordered
them to leave their homes within two days.
In the Kurdish governorates, Iranian refugees possessed
identity cards that let them travel in the area, but
needed permission from the regional government to go to
other parts of Iraq. Turkish refugees in Makhmour refugee
camp could move freely within the district, but they risked
detention if they did not carry identification and authorization
from camp authorities to leave the district for more
than a day.
Some 3,000 Palestinians sought shelter in two
F
D
99