Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told national television on Tuesday that Australia would not repatriate its nationals with links to Islamic State members, giving blunt advice to families stranded in Syria: “Make your bed and lie there.”
His comments followed reports that 34 Australian women and children were turned away by Syrian authorities after leaving a Syrian camp housing ISIS fighters and their families with the intention of returning to Australia via the Syrian capital Damascus.
According to the Associated Press, the 11 families were leaving for Damascus from al-Rozi camp in northeastern Syria when they were contacted by Syrian authorities and told they could not travel because their exit formalities were incomplete.
Camp director Hakumiyeh Ibrahim told the AP that the repatriation was organized by the families of the returnees who had accompanied them from Australia. It’s unclear if or when they will be able to try to travel again, according to the Associated Press.
“We will not send them back,” Albanese told state broadcaster ABC. These are the people who went abroad to support the Islamic State, and they are the people who went there to basically support the people who want a caliphate. ”
Pressure is mounting on Australia, the United States, Britain and other countries to repatriate thousands of people, mostly women and children, who have been held in Syrian concentration camps since the caliphate collapsed more than five years ago.
Amnesty International and other NGOs have warned of widespread and systematic human rights abuses in the camps, where many detainees are forcibly trafficked to ISIS and those born into the caliphate are subjected to torture, gender-based violence, enforced disappearances and other atrocities.
Some countries have begun the legally and politically difficult process of repatriating their citizens, but progress has been slow as many governments are reluctant to act due to national security concerns or domestic opposition.
Al Rozi camp, home to 34 Australians, is home to Shamima Begum, a London schoolgirl who fled to join ISIS in 2015 at the age of 15 and was subsequently stripped of her British citizenship.
Australia previously repatriated groups of women and children linked to ISIS from Syrian refugee camps in 2019 and 2022.
Two Australian women and four children escaped Syria on their own last year and returned via Lebanon without assistance from Australian authorities, the ABC said.
In a statement to CNN, an Australian government spokesperson said the country “has not repatriated people from Syria and has no intention of repatriating them.”
“Our security services have been and continue to monitor the situation in Syria to ensure we are prepared for Australians seeking to return to Australia,” the Home Affairs spokesperson said.
“People in this group need to know that if they commit a crime and return to Australia, they will face the full force of the law.”
Save the Children has long worked on behalf of Australian citizens detained in Syria, but in 2023 it lost a lawsuit against the federal government to force authorities to return Australian citizens. The group told CNN it was not involved in recent attempts by Australians to escape from the camp, but called on the government to repatriate the Australians.
“These innocent children have already lost years of their childhood and deserve the opportunity to rebuild their lives in the safety of their homes and reintegrate into the Australian way of life,” Save the Children Australia CEO Matt Tinkler said in a statement to CNN.
The fall of Syria’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2024 has created further fear for those living in the camps. Syria’s new government has expelled the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which fought alongside the United States against ISIS, from large swathes of northern Syria, including camps.
Last month, a group of United Nations experts called on “more than 50 countries to urgently repatriate, rehabilitate and reintegrate thousands of foreign nationals in detention, with accountability consistent with international law.”
Earlier this week, the United Nations refugee agency announced that a significant number of residents had left Al-Hol camp, Syria’s other main detention center, and that the Syrian government planned to relocate them.
Separately, the US announced this week that it had transferred more than 5,700 “adult male ISIS fighters” from camps in Syria to detention sites in Iraq. The United Nations Group of Experts had previously criticized the move, saying it violates detainees’ right to due process and subjects them to inhumane prison conditions.
