Lebanon minister accuses Syria of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Sunnis

BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have begun ethnically cleansing Sunnis and deliberately pushing refugees across the border into Lebanon, the Lebanese caretaker minister for social affairs said yesterday.
Wael Abu Faour said that during the 27-month-old conflict Syrian forces had committed what was “tantamount to ethnic cleansing next to the Syrian-Lebanese border.”
“(Assad) is trying to displace all the Sunnis to Lebanon and this is why I expect to have more displaced people,” he said. “What began was a wave of people fleeing from violence to Lebanon, but what is happening now is a completely different matter. What is happening now is organized displacement of the Syrian people — organized based on sectarian and political motives,” said Abu Faour, a frequent critic of Assad.
He made his comments after meeting UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who said that refugees in Lebanon and their local hosts directly needed support from world powers.
“My very strong appeal is for massive support not only to refugees, not only to local communities but to Lebanon itself in order to be able to respond to this challenge,” Guterres said, adding that the Lebanese education, health, and social affairs ministries need financial aid.
Diplomats say that foreign donors are unwilling to give money to Lebanon’s sectarian-based government which they see as deeply divided over Syria’s war and dysfunctional on domestic issues.