Australian children held in increasingly “militarised” displacement camps in north-east Syria have been told they will be shot if they try to breach the fence line, as Australia refuses to issue its citizens with passports so they can be repatriated.
The US has offered to bring the Australians out of the camps on the proviso they have been issued with travel documents or passports, a condition to which Australia has not agreed.
“[The] government doesn’t have a plan to get people out of the camps at this time,” the home affairs minister is recorded as telling advocates in a meeting earlier this year.
The US government wants the camps closed, and has repeatedly urged all countries to repatriate their citizens, arguing leaving women and children in the Syrian camps makes them vulnerable to radicalisation and raises the risk of Islamic State regenerating.
There are fewer than 40 Australians – the majority young children – held in two detention camps in north-east Syria. They are the wives, widows and children of dead or jailed Islamic State fighters.
Most have been held in the Roj camp near the Turkish border since 2019.
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