The Belarusian corridor has ceased to be attractive for migrants to the EU

Towhy there was a refugee crisis on the border with Lithuania and why it ended so quickly In a matter of days after Lithuania began to expel migrants back to Belarus, the flow of illegal immigrants across the border almost dried up. The migration crisis, with which Minsk frightened Europe, ended as quickly as it began

 The Belarusian corridor has ceased to be attractive for migrants to the EU

Lithuanian u-turn

On August 13, Lithuanian border guards announced that they had deployed only about two dozen migrants who tried to cross the border illegally to Belarus,and for humanitarian reasons allowed two to stay. Thus, in ten days Vilnius has achieved a significant change in the situation on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border.

Since August 3, Lithuania has started forcibly returning illegal migrants detained at the border to Belarus. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko in response ordered to close “every meter” of the border. As a result, the number of border violations immediately decreased significantly-from more than 200 per day to almost isolated cases.

One of the main flows of refugees went through Grodno & mdash; from this city it is close to both the Polish and Lithuanian borders. On August 11–12, the RBC correspondent did not see any migrants in the city (mostly, as reported, they were immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan). An employee of one of the hotels in the city center told RBC that a week ago 19 Iraqis tried to check into the hotel at once, but in the last three days she had not seen a single Arab in the city.

On the square near the Grodno railway station, several taxi drivers said that usually refugees asked to take them to the agro-town of Gozha, a few kilometers from the border crossing Privalka, or to another agro-town of Porechye, also near the Lithuanian border. At the entrance to Porechye, the RBC correspondent found a border patrol that checked the passports of all those entering and asked the purpose of the trip. According to the patrolmen, there are no more refugees in this town. The correspondent of RBC did not find them either.

The cancellation of flights from Iraq to Belarus also obviously affected the situation. Iraqi Airways announced their suspension on August 4. And after that, she began the evacuation of Iraqis from Belarus. (At the same time, European diplomats were the first to announce the impending suspension of flights.) The first export flight was organized on August 9 by the Fly boardBaghdad 80 people went to their homeland. On August 10, the last export flight for Iraqi refugees took off from Minsk to Baghdad. The Boeing 777 Iraqi Airways arrived in the Belarusian capital empty, and left full, a representative of the Iraqi embassy in Belarus, who accompanied compatriots at the airport, told RBC.

The interlocutor of RBC in the Belarusian State Border Committee (CPC) admitted that after the Lithuanians strengthened border security, and Iraq curtailed additional flights to Belarus, there were noticeably fewer refugees.

However, the flow of illegal immigrants to the EU countries from Belarus has not completely dried up yet & mdash; those who were not taken out went to neighboring Latvia and Poland.

On Wednesday and Thursday morning (August 11–12), Latvia announced the prevention of attempts by 91 people to illegally cross into the country from the territory of Belarus (a total of 355 people have been detained on the Latvian border since the beginning of the year). At the same time, the day before, Riga declared a state of emergency in the territories bordering Belarus.

349 people were detained at the Polish border last weekend. (In 2021, a total of 871 illegal immigrants were detained, and for the whole of last year-122.) On Wednesday, the press secretary of the Polish government, Piotr Muller, announced that Poland will strengthen the protection of the border with Belarus.

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Minsk blackmail

An explosive increase in violations at the border occurred immediately after at the end of June, Lukashenko announced that he would no longer “defend Europe”, which was carrying out “hybrid” aggression (the EU had previously announced the introduction of sectoral sanctions and the ban on Belavia flights to Europe). After that, the Belarusian corridor for Arab migrants turned green: if in March 2021eight refugees illegally crossed the border, 77 in May, 473 in June, and 2366 in July. In total, in 2021, the number of people who illegally crossed the Lithuanian border from Belarus, according to the Lithuanian authorities, exceeded 4 thousand-mostly refugees from Iraq (more than 2.8 thousand). At the same time, for the whole of 2020, only 79 people illegally moved to Lithuania, and these were mainly Belarusian citizens.

Minsk denies that the migration crisis on the Lithuanian border was deliberately provoked in response to the actions of the EU. Deputy Chairman of the State Customs Committee Roman Lebedev told RBC that Belarus not only does not help migrants to cross the border with Lithuania, but also does not close its eyes to their passage through its checkpoints: “If we see a group, we always detain”. But, he immediately adds, because of the strained relations with its neighbors, Belarus was forced to strengthen some areas, weakening others. Medvedev also claims that not all Iraqis who come to Belarus are necessarily refugees, many came as tourists.

In the last month or two, about 600 people a week have been arriving in the country, but “most of them are flying back,” Medvedev said. This is obviously facilitated by the fact that a simplified version of the Belarusian visa is available for Iraqi citizens— it can be obtained directly at the Minsk airport.

“We just focused on the areas that are important to us,” another interlocutor in the CPC cautiously explains to RBC (by important, we mean those from which there may be infiltrations into Belarus, and not from the country.& mdash; RBCAccording to him, refugees do not cross the border in large groups. They stretch out and try to cross it one by one. “And we have, for example, 30 alarms [alarms]and two UAZs [for going to the place of violation] on the site. We just physically can’t catch them all, ” he says, however, without expressing any particular regret about this.& mdash; If they are gone— well, that’s fine».

An Iraqi named Rakib, who was going to fly to Baghdad on an export flight on August 10, confirmed to RBC in bad English that the Belarusian border guards did not interfere with crossing the border, but on the other side they were met by Lithuanian border guards with dogs. They fired into the air and forced me to turn back. Rakib tried to cross the border several times. He showed a video taken at the entrances to the border,— on the side of the road, a dozen taxi cars can be seen bringing such refugees.

Most of those who came from Iraq do not speak English, they have to be explained to them through a Google translator. “We couldn’t get to Europe. They closed the borders and beat [us], took the money and the mobile phone. There have been many wars in our country, there is no freedom, ” Mustafa, a young Iraqi, told RBC through an interpreter. He tried to move to Lithuania and Poland with his family— unsuccessfully. When asked why they stopped trying to break through the border, Mustafa replied: “If we come back again, they will kill us.” He was also going to fly back to Iraq on August 10.

The refugees say that they learned about the Belarusian route from Arabic-speaking groups in social networks, in particular on Facebook. As a rule, they did not buy tickets, but so-called tours from Iraqi travel companies.The package includes a plane ticket, assistance with obtaining a Belarusian visa, instructions for crossing the border, sometimes a night or several in a Belarusian hotel.

Press tour in Belarusian

On August 11, Minsk made an attempt to show foreign media that the country’s authorities do not help migrants to travel to the border. The CPC invited the journalists of Sky News, CNN, The New York Times and RBC, who remained in the country after Lukashenka’s big press conference on August 9, to discuss where it makes sense to organize a press tour so that the correspondents themselves could assess the situation with refugees at the border. Roman Lebedev, deputy head of the GPC department Alexey Sytenkov and several employees of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry were waiting for journalists at a round table under the portrait of Lukashenka in the building of the GPC.

First of all, the border guards showed several videos with wounded Iraqis found on the border strip, & mdash; these were illustrations of the fact that Lithuania grossly violates human rights. Vilnius ignores those who are “fleeing from the war,” Medvedev said, but at the same time declares its readiness to accept Belarusians fleeing from political repression. “This is an example of double standards,” concluded the deputy chairman of the CPC.

The journalists suggested going to the border as soon as possible. Medvedev agreed, but insisted on first stopping by the Voronovsky hospital to look at the refugee, whom the Lithuanian border guards, according to him, broke his legs, especially since it was on the way. At the exit from the building, the journalists were photographed on the phone by someone who introduced himself to the RBC correspondent as an employee of the press service of the CPC. A few minutes later, this photo appeared in one of the pro-government Belarusian telegram channels.

On the second floor of the Voronovskaya Hospital, a refugee with “broken” legs came to the journalists on his own in a hall equipped for a press center. He gave his name as Hussein and told through an interpreter that he had managed to cross the border with Lithuania in a group of several people. He walked halfway to Kaunas, turned himself in to the police to get refugee status, but he was beaten and sent back. At the end, Hussein stood up and showed his wounded ankles in the green.

Then the press secretary of the CPC Anton Bychkovsky took the floor. He said that ” information about the arrival of journalists at the border was leaked to the Internet, and therefore the Lithuanian border guards retreated deep into their territory and stopped expelling migrants. Therefore, there is nothing to do at the border now, he concluded, there are no illegal immigrants on the strip. And he offered to talk to another wounded man in the Voronovsky hospital.

When asked by RBC how the information was leaked to the Internet, Bychkovsky replied that the journalists at the CPC were photographed by a “user of social networks”. To the remark of RBC that the author of the photo introduced himself as an employee of the press service of the department, Bychkovsky said that this could not be. Sytenkov suggested not to argue & mdash; why the Lithuanians left, it does not matter, it is important that they are not at the border.

As a result, representatives of the CPC still took the journalists to the border-to a well-equipped, exemplary site with a fence, an alert system, barbed wire and cameras. Of course, there were no migrants or victims of the atrocities of the Lithuanian border service there-only solid evidence that Belarus perfectly guards its border.

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Источник rbc.ru

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