Syrian lawmaker denies reports on changing citizenship laws

ERBI, Kurdistan Region — A Syrian lawmaker denied Friday that the parliament in Damascus had recently passed a law in secret to change the existing citizenship regulations which, if true, could prevent millions of displaced people from keeping their Syrian nationality. 

Diaz Taous, who is a member of the parliament’s legislation committee told Rudaw the government had no plans to change the laws and described the reports as “fabricated.”

Several Arabic media outlets reported last week that the Syrian parliament had unanimously voted to change existing requirements to obtain citizenship under Syrian law which would accordingly come into force as of 2018. 

“These false propaganda are manufactured by the opposition after their defeat in the battlegrounds. Such reports are part of the process to terrorise the population by the opposition,” Taous told Rudaw in telephone interview Friday. 

The reports suggest that the new regulations will particularly target displaced people and refugees who will accordingly be deprived of their citizenship status unless they return to their areas of origin.

Syria has renewed its citizenship laws several times since it gained independence in 1945. 

Nearly 30 percent of Syria’s one million Kurdish population were stripped of their citizenship in the 1962 controversial census which declared them as ‘ajanib’ or foreigners. In April 2011, just weeks after the Syrian uprising, President Bashar Assad signed a decree to grant the ajanib citizenship, especially in Hasaka area, east of the country.  

In 2016, the United Nations (UN) identified 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance, of which more than 6 million are internally displaced within Syria, and over 4.8 million are refugees outside of the country.

“The government’s plan is to deprive over 10 million people of keeping their citizenship. It has granted citizenship status to Iranian and Afghan nationals among others to change the demographic makeup of the country,” said Nizar Haraki, the Syrian opposition representative in Qatar.