Back to Contents Katherine Harbord: I mean, I would assume it is vanishingly small, but no, I don't even know who would have those figures. Asylos: Moving on to the subject of checkpoints. Do you have any information on where checkpoints might be located, who tends to be arrested and what happens on occasions of arrests? Katherine Harbord: So I have a very little bit of information, but this relates to checkpoints in the north, near to the camps near Tripoli. What I have been told by stateless Palestinian asylum seekers from Lebanon is that Lebanese armed forces checkpoints or Lebanese police checkpoints are not much of a problem any more, problems rather come from militia, Hezbollah and others. It was certainly my interlocutors’ understanding that they felt that Palestinians, those with Lebanese registration or Palestinians from Syria, were disproportionately being detained at checkpoints and sometimes stripped of their freedom of movement, sometimes detained. Generally speaking, my understanding is that they will be arrested or detained the first time and usually either given a warning, sort of, "We don't want your sort here, or you can't pass through here." And if they persist, then they might be sort of roughed up a little bit, slapped or beaten. This was corroborated by three individuals that I've spoken to separately about this in the last few years. As I say, they were all connected with the Tripoli region. But I heard similar stories from each of them, which led me to kind of conclude that there probably is some consistency. In one case, the man that was detained was being beaten. He was actually beaten quite badly, and this was because he was a Sunni man who was married to a Shia woman and it was a Shia militia that detained him. So the problem, in that case, was not his Palestinian identity if you like, but rather a sectarian question. All of them felt they were being discriminated against because they were Palestinians, but there may also be other elements to it. It may not be quite as straightforward as that. I've heard of one person who was arrested but this is going back about five or six years. He was arrested by the police. He was a non-ID man. He was ostensibly arrested because of his lack of ID and kind of suspicion of illegal status or something like that. He was removed to a detention centre, not exactly prison. He reported ill-treatment. And his family was able to secure his release through payment of a bribe. And again, he felt that his status as a non-ID Palestinian was behind this and that his arrest was an opportunity for a bribe. Certainly anecdotally based on the numbers of persons I talked to on this matter, but Syrian Palestinians perceived that they experience more discrimination than other Palestinian groups and receive more verbal abuse and sort of racist “behaviour.” There’s a lot of prejudice against them. There’s obviously a lot of prejudice against stateless Palestinians, full stop, especially in Lebanon. But this is kind of magnified for the Syrian Palestinians. Asylos: The detention that you mentioned, where would they take place if not in prison? Katherine Harbord: So my understanding with the militias was that they detain people either at the checkpoint or at a quasi-military base. With the police, the man who was detained was taken first to a local police station and later to a detention centre in Beirut. Asylos: Continuing on the question of freedom of movement, we talked about travel documents. Let’s say a stateless Palestinian managed to get out of the country, how would it be possible for them to return to Lebanon? To what extent would their specific status influence this possibility of them to come back at all? Katherine Harbord: This is information I've heard from one person plus one person who has experienced this. This individual told me that if you have received permission to live outside of a camp rather than at your registered address which would be in one of the camps, then it is possible for you to go and return. But his opinion was that outside this specific case it would not be possible. Or if you don't have residence at all, you won't be able to return. And he claimed that it's more difficult for those who are residents of camps than those who are permitted to reside outside. Asylos: Moving on to the health section, we found a report mentioning increase of viral hepatitis A, beside, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. Are you aware of such an increase or of other communicable diseases affecting the person specifically? Katherine Harbord: I would be really interested to know this answer also. Asylos: Okay. We found, of course, information on the mental health issues that affect person refugees in Lebanon, especially after COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis. Would you want to point us to any type of source that might have more specifics on this? 17. Appendices 164