Latvia declared a state of emergency, Lithuania Minsk is considering building a barbed wire fence to prevent a record number of migrants from crossing the border from Belarus. Minsk is said to be using these migrants as a lever to reverse sanctions against EU countries.
The authorities of the two Baltic countries and Poland are facing serious problems with increasing illegal immigration. They sought help from Brussels, accusing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of carefully planning border crossings in the form of a “hybrid war.”
Vilnius, Riga, and Warsaw believe that Lukashenko is using immigrants mainly from Iraq to pressure the European Union to lift the sanctions against him for violently suppressing the opposition after last year’s contentious elections. Think he has been manipulated.
The tension between the trio and the authoritarian leaders of Belarus is already high. Lithuania has hosted many of Lukashenko’s pro-democratic competitors, and Poland provides asylum for Belarusian Olympic athletes Christina Zimanusskaya.
At an eight-and-a-half-hour press conference on Monday, Lukashenko denied that Belarus was “blackmailing.” Europe And the immigration crisis, but said it is responding to foreign pressure “according to its capabilities.”
“We will not blackmail any illegal immigrants,” he told reporters at the Independence Palace in Minsk. “We didn’t threaten anyone. But you put us in such a situation and we have to respond. We are responding.”
Last week’s pressure from the European Union persuaded Iraq that in early August, Iraq increased daily direct routes from Iraqi Kurdistan to Sulaymaniyah and Erbil and Basra and suspended flights to Belarus, thus greatly reducing arrivals in Lithuania. The number of immigrants.
But flight records show that an Iraqi Airlines flight from Baghdad landed in Minsk on Tuesday, and the decline in the number of arrivals from Lithuania was offset by an exponential increase in the number of Belarusian immigrants. Latvia And Poland.
There is no doubt that Belarusian officials participated in the plan.Lithuania has Published video taken by Frontex, The EU border agency, showed off vehicles that the Belarusian Border Guard may use to escort immigrants to the EU border.
A leaked video shows that the migrants were released from a van near the border, first in Russian and then in English to tell them which way to go. Another photo shows a Belarusian riot police wearing a helmet telling a group of people that many of them were carrying heavy bags and “walking” to the EU border.
Although there are currently no direct flights operating from Kabul or other Afghan cities, observers now suspect that Belarus will try to bring in more refugees from Afghanistan. Lukashenko also told officials last week that to tighten the country’s borders, once they are turned away by the European Union, they can effectively trap migrants in no-man’s land.
After the European Union put pressure on Iraq, the number of arrivals in Lithuania slowed sharply. Last week, 271 migrants crossed the border from Belarus, up from 1,106 in the previous week. But the country must now deal with 4,110 irregular migrants from Iraq, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Syria, Iran and Russia, which is 50 times the total in 2020.
Members of Congress of the Baltic State discussed on Tuesday whether to build a 4-meter-high metal fence about 315 miles (508 kilometers) from its 420-mile border with Belarus, with barbed wire on it, and allow the military to patrol the border. The surrounding defense personnel pushed about 700 people back to Belarus, and only women with children were allowed to stay.
“Lukashenko is using immigrants as weapons,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said over the weekend. “This is Lukashenko’s mixed campaign against the integrity of the EU and its eastern border.”
The Belarusian leader is not the first to be accused of using immigration to pressure the EU. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Had previously requested cash publicly To prevent tens of thousands of refugees from trying to reach Europe.
After the number of arrivals increased fivefold each week, the Latvian government declared a state of emergency in its border area on Tuesday, which lasted until November 10, allowing the army, police and border guards to order illegal immigrants to return to the country they came from, using if necessary force.
The authorities stated that since August 6th, Latvia has detained 283 people who crossed the border illegally from Belarus, bringing the total to 343 for the whole year. , In an organized process”.
At the same time, Poland recorded 491 asylum seekers from Belarus in the first week of August, a nine-fold increase from the previous week because it provided asylum to Zimanusskaya who refused to return home from the Tokyo Olympics.
The authorities said on Monday that they had detained 349 migrants who had transited through Belarus since Friday. The Polish Border Guard stated that the detained immigrants were mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan, and added that so far this year, 871 illegal immigrants have been detained at the Belarusian border, compared with 122 in the whole of last year.
The European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ilva Johnson visited the borders of Belarus and Lithuania last week and accused Lukashenko of “taking very serious acts of aggression” with the aim of provoking.
Slovenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency, will host a meeting of EU justice ministers and interior ministers on August 18 to discuss illegal immigration from Belarus and the situation on the Lithuanian border.
Slovenia stated in a letter to EU diplomats that the Lithuanian-Belarusian border poses a “serious security threat” to the 27-nation group, which has become a “state-supported weaponization of illegal immigration from Belarus”. Testimony”.
The European Commission is preparing to issue 36 million euros (30 million pounds) in aid to help Lithuania provide shelter, interpreters and other facilities for asylum seekers. More funds are expected to be released to strengthen border controls, although the commission insists that it will not provide funds for the separation wall or fence.
A spokesperson said: “Our support is to support integrated border management solutions to ensure that abnormal border crossings will not be detected, and then link with an effective and rapid immigration management system.”
On Monday, Lukashenko also hinted that he could release other hybrid weapons to Europe, especially threatening to cut off cooperation with the United States in combating the smuggling of radioactive materials.
