For Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International: how many Syrian workers will have to be killed, how many will have to be injured, how many of their homes and tents have to be set on fire, before you take this problem seriously? If this was another community in a country that is not aligned with the US, would the plight have received more attention? A page, or a press release, please. Amnesty issued a brief statement. I wondered the other day: is because Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are close (personally and professionally) to Lebanese lawyers who are part of the right-wing establishment? Does that explain the shameful Human Rights Watch Award for Muhammad Al-Mughrabi who does not think that Sabra and Shatila was a human rights violation, and who refuses to call the Israeli invasion of 1982 an invasion? The new Department of State report on Human Rights said this on the matter today: "There were reports that Syrian workers, usually employed in manual labor occupations, suffered discrimination following the withdrawal of Syrian forces in April. Many Syrian laborers also reportedly left Lebanon out of fear of harassment. There were no data collected on this situation; therefore the true extent of the problem was unknown." Don't you like the standards of Human Rights at the Department of State?
PS The Khiyam Center for human rights in Lebanon has collected information on the murder and abuse of Syrian workers in Lebanon. But the fancy staff of Amnesty and HRW may not even know of the center. And some of them--how dare they!--have beards.