Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Person of the week: Lukashenko
Belarus’ dictator sells the Germany ticket
By Wolfram Weimer
Lukashenko organizes a systematic mass exodus of people from the Near and Middle East to Germany. The federal police are sounding the alarm. Berlin seems open to blackmail and fears a rush like 2015. The new traffic light government is facing plenty of explosives in terms of foreign policy.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas finds unusually clear words. Alexander Lukashenko is the “head of a state smuggling ring,” he says angrily during the deliberations of the EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg. In Berlin, alarm bells are ringing in several ministries. The federal police registered almost 5,000 refugees at the German-Polish border in October. In September as a whole, the number was still below 2000 and in August below 500. “Lukashenko opens the locks,” says the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The security authorities fear an uncontrolled crowd, especially on the eastern border of Brandenburg.
Secret service reports warn that Lukashenko’s government has set up a veritable airlift to the Middle East. More and more chartered planes full of refugees are coming to Minsk from North Africa and the Middle East. New machines are coming in every day from Iraq in particular, initially only starting in Baghdad, now also in Basra, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. The EU foreign ministers are considering new sanctions against the state-owned Belarusian airline. However, some refugee flights are already being handled via Moscow. Russia is open to Lukashenko with its blackmail policy.
The secret services warn that there will be more flights every day; the system now works like well-organized tourist charter trips. The Belarusian authorities used the crowd as a source of foreign currency: each migrant pays around 5,000 euros for the Minsk route. This includes the flight ticket and Lukashenko’s official tug guarantee. This is issued as an entry visa by the Belarusian state travel agency Centrkurort. That costs a “deposit” of $ 3,000. The sum is formally used to pay fines to Belarus if a traveler does not return to Iraq. So it is a direct foreign exchange head money that the Belarusian state collects for every refugee. The Lithuanian government has made the international public aware of this perfidious method of trafficking in human beings.
“Almost everyone wants to go to Germany”
In the Middle East the story is circulating that the Lukashenko route for 5000 euros is comfortable, safe and open. Tens of thousands would be on their way. Lukashenko’s regime lets the refugees take buses directly from Minsk to the Polish border, from where they are supposed to make their way to Germany. “Almost everyone wants to go to Germany. Poland is only a transit country,” said the situation reports.
In a letter to Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the Federal Police Union, Heiko Teggatz, calls for the introduction of temporary border controls at the border with Poland. This is the only way for the federal government to prevent a “collapse” at the border. In the Ministry of the Interior, there is fear of a repetition of the 2015 scene.
The Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis warns the EU partners that Belarus is ruthlessly using migrants as a “political weapon”. The EU has so far defended itself with two measures – on the one hand with economic sanctions and on the other hand with a half-hearted reinforcement of border protection in the east. But Lukashenko will not stop either. He is copying the strategy of Turkish President Erdogan to openly blackmail the EU with organized masses of refugees. On state television, Lukashenko bluntly explains that he only reacts to the sanctions and criticism of the West against his dictatorship: “They put us in such a situation that we have to react. And we react.”
EU calls for “physical barriers”
Lukashenko is apparently also using the change of government in Berlin to increase political pressure. In terms of foreign policy, Germany is rated as weak in action and therefore prone to blackmail. Berlin’s policy, which has been in effect since 2015, of ostensibly solving the migration problem through high payments to Turkey, threatens to come to an end. More and more EU partners are calling for Berlin to turn around and start active border security. Twelve EU countries have in one joint writing urged the European Commission to massively protect the external borders. The twelve countries are calling for “physical barriers” and joint EU funding to ward off mass movements.
They also criticize the fact that there are still no rules on how to react to “hybrid attacks” by countries that use illegal migrants to exert political pressure. Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Cyprus signed. The upcoming government in Berlin comes under additional pressure from this letter, after all, the SPD and the Greens are demanding humanitarian treatment of the people at Europe’s external borders and legal migration routes. Will the traffic light continue Merkel’s passive migration policy by checkbook or will it actively accommodate EU partners in matters of border security? Lukashenko is putting the new traffic light government to the test before it has even started work.