The disinformation campaign targeting Syrian refugees spearheaded by the media, political figures and social media has made Lebanon a dangerous place for refugees.
In Lebanon, Syrian refugees are regularly subjected to serious and xenophobic online and offline misinformation and disinformation campaigns that incite against them and call for their deportation. In recent months, this anti-Syrian sentiment has grown as local media focused on a couple cases of crimes allegedly implicating Syrian nationals.
In light of these incidents, rumors circulated in local media but more predominantly online on social media. The incitement against refugees comes from a myriad of sources: Politicians, mainstream media, religious leaders, and politically affiliated groups have all contributed to it, resulting in an increasingly dangerous, and in some cases deadly, atmosphere for Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
When news broke on April 9 that Pascal Sleiman, an official of the Lebanese Forces (LF), a Christian political party, was kidnapped and killed during an alleged carjacking, misinformation and disinformation ran rampant online. Members of the Lebanese Forces and their domestic opponents Hezbollah traded mainly baseless accusations online.
Soon after, caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi announced that a “gang of Syrian nationals” had been behind the incident and took Sleiman’s body into Syria. Repercussions against Syrians in Lebanon were swift. Videos emerged on X and Instagram, some of which were older videos of previous incidents taken out of context, of gangs of black shirted men attacking and brutalizing Syrians, their homes, cars, and stores.
“The LF were more visibly involved in the offline repercussions against Syrian refugees in Christian-majority cities,” wrote Ralph Baydoun, researcher at InflueAnswers who published a report on the online discourse after Sleiman’s murder. Baydoun found that the main actors spreading disinformation and hate speech online following Sleiman’s murder were supporters of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), another Christian party and the party of former Lebanese President Michel Aoun. The FPM “contribut[ed] to 42 percent of the anti-refugee content,” while non politically affiliated or neutral accounts represented 18 percent of the anti-refugee content. Pro-Hezbollah accounts published 14 percent of overall content, pro-LF accounts 7 percent, and “foreign accounts” 8 percent.
While the algorithms and features of tech platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Tiktok are known to exacerbate the spread of mis- and disinformation, in Lebanon, politicians and mainstream media have contributed to the widespread circulation of false talking points related to Syrian refugees.
Top Lebanese officials like the caretaker prime minister and interior minister have regularly spoken about the “existential threat” Syrian refugees pose to Lebanon, while figures from all over the political spectrum have incited against them or promoted dangerous and problematic solutions. For instance, in May 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called on Lebanese authorities to “open the seas” so that migrant boats can reach Europe, saying “whoever wants to leave for Europe, for Cyprus, the sea is in front of you. Take a boat and board it.”
Such statements and anti-refugee rhetoric have been aided and emboldened by the country’s mainstream media channels. In February 2024, as part of an anti-Syrian refugee campaign, MTV, a privately owned channel and one of the country’s most watched television channels, started running ads that propagated baseless claims against Syrian refugees. One ad falsely claimed that half of the population in Lebanon was made up of Syrian refugees. Additionally, the ads included old video footage of Syrian refugees in Aleppo, Jordan, and Turkey presenting them as if they were taken in Lebanon.
The campaign was a collaboration between MTV, the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an NGO called Beit Lebanon Al-Alam Foundation, and an association of Lebanese employers called Lebanese Economic Organizations. In addition, a series of billboards that call for “undo[ing] the damage” of Syrian refugees’ presence in the country were run.
The rampant rhetoric against refugees often makes claims that refugees live a more comfortable life than the Lebanese population.
Among the rumors circulated are that refugees live in luxury, earn more than the Lebanese, do not pay taxes, get paid in US dollars, are encouraged to have many children, are more inclined to crime, and that they exacerbated the banking crisis.
Amidst a multifaceted and persistent economic crisis that has resulted in more than 80 percent of the Lebanese population to be below the poverty line, this disinformation puts Syrian refugees at risk of violence and exacerbates their marginalization. Most Syrian refugees already live in increasingly desperate circumstances. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nine out of 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in extreme poverty. The Lebanese government has also made it illegal for Syrians to hold most jobs, leading many to work irregularly, making them susceptible to exploitation and labor violations.
In 2023, the distribution of up to $125 per Syrian family in aid from the UN was suspended after government pushback. Lebanon’s caretaker Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar, one of the country’s most outspoken anti-Syrian figures, expressed concerns that paying Syrian refugees in dollars “would make them stay in Lebanon.”
Yet, the Lebanese government continues to materially benefit directly from being a host and transit country of refugees. On May 2, 2024, the European Union announced a $1.6 billion deal aimed at keeping migrants and asylum seekers from reaching Cyprus and Italy. Of the sum, $223 million is marked to aid Lebanon’s security services, and $823 million is destined for the most vulnerable groups in Lebanon, including Lebanese themselves.
Many in Lebanon still hold resentment from the Syrian occupation which took place between 1976 and 2005. It is regularly brought up, with some labeling the Syrian refugees’ presence as a “new occupation.” However, the difference is that today Syrian refugees are fleeing the very same regime that occupied Lebanon.
Many of those advocating to deport Syrians use the false pretext that the war in Syria is over and that it is now safe for their return. In May 2024, for instance, the Maronite patriarch said during a Sunday sermon that refugees should be sent to “safe areas” in Syria.
- Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s European Migration Researcher
Though there has been less fighting in Syria, the war is not over. “Just because there is no bombardment [in some areas], the regime is still autocratic. It is an oppressive regime and Syria is still a police state,” one Syrian activist in Lebanon said in an interview. Human rights groups have continued to maintain that it is not safe for refugees to return to Syria. “Our position is that no area of Syria is safe and there are no conditions for safe and dignified returns to that country,” explained Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s European Migration Researcher.
Calls for deporting Syrians, despite the ongoing violence and serious human rights violations they could be exposed to, are not new. A 2022 social media campaign with the hashtag “our land is not for the displaced Syrian” circulated rumors and disinformation about Syrian refugees, framed them as potential terrorists, and justified hate speech, racism and othering of the Syrian community.
“[N]umbers, figures and information [were] given about refugees with no evidence to back them up,” social media analysis of the campaign by InflueAnswers revealed, adding that the false information was used to spread “the hashtag and to prove an argument.”
In 2023, over 13,772 refugees were forcibly deported back to Syria in 300 deportation incidents documented by Human Rights Watch (HRW). “What is well known to European authorities is that Lebanon has been returning Syrians forcefully since 2019 and this has been documented by Amnesty,” Tidona of Amnesty said.
These deportations have had devastating consequences. Mahmoud Hassana, a 27-year-old Syrian man, was killed at a checkpoint near Homs by the Assad regime after being forcibly deported from Lebanon on May 8, 2024. Other Syrians detained by Lebanese security forces have attempted suicide upon hearing news of deportation of family members, while another who allegedly feared deportation killed himself on April 26.
The coalescence of media, government figures, and political leaders targeting Syrian refugees through rhetoric and state actions has made Lebanon a dangerous place for Syrian refugees. Urgent actions need to be taken to protect this vulnerable population and guarantee their rights.
Social media platforms such as Youtube, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp), and X need to take meaningful actions to counter racist and harmful disinformation on their platforms. Tech companies should increase their investment in moderators familiar with the Arabic language and its local dialects, and provide them with adequate human rights training, including on freedom of expression, nondiscrimination, and hate speech. They should also conduct risk assessments to understand to what extent their content moderation and content curation algorithms contribute to disinformation and hate speech in the Arabic language. Results of these assessments should be communicated with the public, and particularly civil society and independent media. Platforms should also ensure that the datasets training these algorithms are of high quality and are sensitive to the specific cultural, linguistic, and political realities of the region. Additionally, they need to start looking at how cultural battles in the United States or Western Europe are playing out abroad and superimposing themselves onto other global regions.
The EU and other international donors must design a series of mechanisms to enforce human rights considerations when providing aid to Lebanon. As per Tidona: “Any cooperation with Lebanon has to be equipped with strong safeguards.” Donors and partners should apply human rights impact assessments and a means of suspending aid if said conditions are not met.
But simply suspending aid would not be enough. The political class would likely flip the economic shortfalls back onto the refugees and the vulnerable communities themselves. Donors should also fund media narratives and initiatives that cover migration-focused issues and challenge anti-refugee sentiment and incitement, including misinformation and disinformation. The focus should particularly be on initiatives that can have a wide public reach such as mainstream television stations that regularly uncritically cover speeches of Lebanon’s political class.
Ultimately, the fight against misinformation and disinformation needs to be multifaceted. It needs to counter false talking points but also make sure coherent counternarratives are available and accessible. Furthermore, international partners who work with Lebanese authorities must understand their role in exacerbating the danger for the Syrian community in Lebanon when they work with or fund anti-Syrian firebrands and polemicists.
Justin Salhani is a writer, journalist, and producer based between Beirut and Paris..
