Friday 19th November 2021
Lukashenko denies allegations
“Don’t want migrants to come through Belarus”
Clashes again occur on the Polish-Belarusian border – according to Poland, the government in Minsk is once again bringing hundreds of migrants into the area. In an interview, the ruler Lukashenko commented on the allegations that he wanted to put pressure on the EU.
The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko has denied allegations that his government is deliberately smuggling refugees into the border area with Poland in order to put the EU under pressure. Lukashenko said it was “absolutely possible” that his armed forces would have helped migrants enter Poland in an interview with the British BBC. At the same time, however, he denied that the people had been invited by him. “We are Slavs. We have a heart. Our troops know that the migrants are going to Germany,” said Lukashenko. “And to be honest, I don’t want them to come through Belarus.”
Meanwhile, there have been clashes between Polish border guards and migrants from the Middle East on the Belarusian-Polish border. As the border guard announced, hundreds of people tried again the evening before to break through the border with Poland. According to Polish information, the Belarusian government is again bringing migrants to the border between the two states. A spokeswoman for the Polish border guards said that hundreds of people were transported back to the border area during the night and asked to enter Poland in the dark. She spoke of about 500 people. Belarusian armed forces tried to blind Polish border guards with lasers in order to put them out of action.
Poland’s border guards accused the Belarusian authorities of providing tear gas to migrants. Stones were thrown from a group of 500 people on Thursday evening and tear gas was sprayed in the direction of the border guards. According to the information, the border guards arrested 45 migrants.
The situation has recently been extremely tense
The Belarusian authorities had previously reported the evacuation of a temporary refugee camp on the border with Poland. The approximately 2000 people affected had spent the night in a nearby warehouse, reported the state news agency Belta. Photos from the agency showed migrants on mats in the accommodation. For many of the people it had been the “first warm night” for a long time, wrote Belta.
With increasingly icy temperatures in the Belarusian-Polish border area, thousands of refugees from the Middle East have been stuck for weeks, including many Kurds from Iraq. The situation on the border has recently been extremely tense. Poland has erected a border fence and gathered more than 15,000 security guards at the border. Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said that Warsaw had accepted an offer from Estonia to help out with 100 soldiers on the border.
The fate of the remaining refugees is unclear
Belarus recently called on the EU member states to accept migrants from the border area. On Thursday, Minsk announced the repatriation of 5,000 of the 7,000 migrants who were stranded in Belarus, according to Belarusian sources. An Iraqi Airways plane with 431 people on board that took off in Minsk landed in Erbil, northern Iraq, on Thursday evening.
The fate of the remaining refugees is currently unclear. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer recently rejected information from Minsk about Germany’s alleged willingness to accept refugees. He spoke to Chancellor Merkel and “received clear information that this was a false report,” said Seehofer in Warsaw.
With reference to Merkel, the Belarusian leadership had spoken of a “humanitarian corridor to Germany”. The Chancellor spoke to Lukashenko for the second time on Wednesday. According to the Berlin government, it was about “humanitarian care and return opportunities for the people affected”.
Merkel advises on repatriation
An EU official has now confirmed that there is “no agreement on a humanitarian corridor and the admission of refugees to the European Union”. There would be no such agreement with Belarus either, emphasized the employee, who did not want to be named. The EU is therefore urging that further return flights be organized for the migrants to their home countries.
According to her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed in the morning with the heads of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on ways to safely repatriate people. The crisis on the EU’s external border was also on the agenda at a meeting between Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Meanwhile, Lukashenko telephoned Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Both have underlined the importance of “cooperation between Minsk and the EU” to solve the problem, announced the Kremlin. Poland and other EU countries as well as Ukraine suspect Russia of helping to steer the refugee crisis.