MONTEVIDEO (Sputnik) – The government of former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, who was in power between 2010 and 2015, was internationally praised when it announced it would welcome those freed from the infamous US prison Guantanamo Bay and Syrian refugees on humanitarian grounds.
Implementations of both operations were criticized over lack of preparation.
The family members of Syrian Jihad Deyab, who was released from Guantanamo and arrived in Uruguay in 2014, have been waiting nine months for the country and the Red Cross to organize his transfer, Sputnik has found out.
Deyab, who needs crutches to move, appeared before the human rights department at the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry earlier this week to inquire about the status of the family reunification procedures. The department’s head Alejandra Costa took the details of his relatives and asked the consular affairs to begin processing the visas, Deyab told Sputnik.
"I don’t understand why they haven’t done this before," Deyab said.
While Deyab was still in Guantanamo, the Uruguayan government told him his family would be waiting for him in Montevideo, but that did not take place. Most of his family members are in Syria.
Deyab’s wife moved to Turkey to prepare to move to Uruguay, but it was not possible as Montevideo’s promises to provide housing to the family were elusive.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp for suspected terrorists was established in 2002 in Cuba following the 9/11 attacks. The prison has been the subject of harsh criticism by human rights advocates, as former detainees and health workers described the conditions of their imprisonment as cruel and inhumane, and reported numerous acts of torture.
Five families of Syrian refugees that Uruguay had taken in last October camped out at a central square in Montevideo, protesting over their failure to get jobs and demanding that the authorities give them more financial support.
"We prefer to return to Syria," one of them told local media.
Another man, Maher Aldees, told El Observador portal that the authorities who had visited the Lebanon refugee camp last year, used "very nice words," but the real life in Uruguay was not what they were promised.
"Living in Lebanon was better than here. I have no problems with the people of Uruguay or the country, I have a problem with the government which lied to us," Aldees said.
In early August, the Aldees family left Uruguay with the intention of reaching Serbia, where they have relatives. They were held in the Istanbul airport, where they spent 26 days, until the Uruguayan government coordinated their return.
The world is grappling an unprecedented migrant crisis, with thousands of undocumented migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.
According to the EU border agency Frontex, a record number of over 340,000 refugees and migrants arrived at the EU borders between January and July 2015.
On Monday, several Latin American nations, including Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, pledged to take in numerous asylum seekers.
