Brussels, Belgium/Warsaw, Poland/Moscow, Russia
Reuters
The European Union agreed on Monday to step up sanctions against Belarus, which denounced as “absurd” Western accusations that it was driving a migrant crisis that has left thousands of people stranded in freezing forests on its borders with the EU.
The Western bloc is seeking to stop what it says is a policy by Belarus to push migrants towards it in revenge for earlier sanctions over a crackdown on protests last year against veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko’s contested re-election.
Migrants gather around a fire in a makeshift camp on the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno region, Belarus, on 14th November. PICTURE: Oksana Manchuk/BelTA/Handout via Reuters.
Migrants – mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan – began appearing on Belarus’ land borders with the EU this year, trying to cross into member states Lithuania, Latvia and Poland via routes not used before.
“This inhumane system of using refugees as tools to exert pressure on the European Union…has got worse over the last days,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, pledging to target those involved in what he called “human trafficking”.
LOCALS HELPING MIGRANTS ON POLAND-BELARUS BORDER FEAR BACKLASH
Paulina Bownik says police removed her from a hospital in the Polish city of Bialystok last month when she tried to give a sick migrant papers to sign so he could seek asylum.
She had heard the migrant would soon be taken back to the border with Belarus and wanted to help him begin the asylum process. But police intervened and she says she now faces a court hearing for allegedly disturbing the peace.
“From my understanding, helping is legal but they are trying to intimidate us,” Bownik, 37, a doctor who has been providing support to migrants at the border, told Reuters.
Police in Bialystok did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about her case.
Migrants walk towards the Bruzgi-Kuznica Bialostocka border crossing in an attempt to cross the Belarusian-Polish border in the Grodno Region, Belarus, on 15th November. PICTURE: Leonid Scheglov/BelTA/Handout via Reuters.
She’s one of over half a dozen locals, doctors and activists in the Poland-Belarus border region who said they felt authorities and hostile groups intimidated people helping migrants, threatening them with legal repercussions or violence.
Polish charities say the situation on the border has created a humanitarian crisis as temperatures drop, and local groups say they face reprisals from the community and from authorities for helping the migrants.
Border Aid (Medycy na Granicy), which includes medics and doctors volunteering to treat sick migrants near the border, said their ambulance’s tyres were deflated earlier this month and the windows of four of their cars were smashed recently.
“If at any point there was a situation in which someone was threatened for providing help, that’s unacceptable,” Jakub Sieczko, one of the medics running the operation, told a news conference.
They have suspended their activities on the advice of a security specialist, handing over to the Polish Centre for International Aid, an NGO.
Many people living near the border said they had faced the threat of being charged as smugglers for providing food and shelter to migrants – activities which lawyers said are not illegal.
One woman said she was threatened by a police officer with smuggling charges after she told him that she would allow migrants to sit in her car and would drive them to a doctor if temperatures continue to drop.
“I told him that I’m ready to go to court so that the court can prove that I’m smuggling people instead of helping those whose health and life are at risk,” she told Reuters, asking to remain anonymous.
A spokesperson for the regional police said warming a migrant in one’s car is not smuggling.
Another activist living near the state of emergency zone – a three kilometre-wide strip of land along the border which is off-limits to journalists, charities and non-residents – said she was fined 300 zlotys ($US75) by the border guard for driving soup and clothes to a group of migrants in the zone.
While it is illegal for people who don’t live in the border zone to enter it, many locals living nearby told Reuters that they have been allowed to enter to work or visit family.
The activist said she drives into the zone regularly and had never been fined until she was seen helping migrants.
A regional police spokesperson told Reuters that they were not responsible for handing out such fines and the border guard handled such situations in the state of emergency zone.
A border guard spokesperson said locals need to get permission to enter the zone and that will only be granted for the purpose of meeting someone who lives there permanently.
The interior ministry referred queries to the police and border guard.
Some residents of border towns said they understood the police and border guard were just doing their jobs.
Kamil Syller, a lawyer and resident of Werstok, has however started displaying a green light at his house to show migrants that help is available.
“It’s so we are all united, so we’re not afraid and we show each other that there’s room to help,” he said.
– Hajnowka, Poland; JOANNA PLUCINSKA, LEON MALHERBE, YARA ABI NADER, FELIX HOSKE, KUBA STEZYCKI AND KACPER PEMPEL/Reuters
The top EU diplomat, Josep Borrell, said a fifth package of sanctions had been agreed by EU foreign ministers and would be finalised in the coming days. They would target airlines, travel agencies and individuals involved in “this illegal push of migrants”, he said.
Stranded on the Belarusian side of the border and increasingly desperate, migrants have tried to force makeshift fences in several places in recent days. Poland, which has reported 5,100 irregular attempts to cross the border so far in November, has been criticised for its treatment of those who make it through.
Latvia said on Monday it had deployed 3,000 troops for a previously unannounced military exercise near the border. It, Lithuania and Poland make up the eastern flank of the EU and NATO, the paramount Western military alliance.
Middle East travel agencies working together with operators in Belarus provided tourist visas to thousands of people in recent months, a Reuters investigation revealed.
The EU executive said it was looking into whether other airlines should face sanctions after the bloc banned Belarus’ state-owned carrier Belavia from its skies and airports. Germany’s Maas stressed Turkish Airlines had stayed away.
Ireland said EU aircraft leasing contracts with Belavia would also end.
The Belarusian foreign ministry said accusations Minsk had engineered the migrant crisis were “absurd”, while Lukashenko said Belarus was trying to convince migrants to go home but that none of them wanted to return. Minsk would retaliate against any new EU sanctions, he said.
The EU has been stepping up sanctions on Belarus for months. Curbs already in place include blacklisting of Lukashenko, his son and 165 other Belarusian officials, as well as restrictions on trade in potash, an important export.
Stranded migrants
The EU called on Lukashenko’s most powerful ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, to put pressure on Minsk to stop risking people’s lives in a geopolitical tug-of-war.
“It is obvious what Lukashenko’s regime and its allies want – to test unity of the Western world,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said.
Vilnius says some migrants fly to Belarus via Moscow and wants the EU to “make the Minsk airport a no-fly-zone,” according to Lithuanian foreign minister. Russia has repeatedly denied any role in migrants’ travel to Belarus and Lithuania has not provided evidence of the travel via Russia.
The Kremlin, which has sent strategic bombers to patrol over Belarus, said Putin had spoken to Lukashenko on Sunday and that Moscow had no plans to reroute gas flows away from Belarus despite Minsk threatening to cut transit to Europe through the Yamal pipeline.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed as “wrong” a US State Department statement that the Belarus border crisis was meant to distract attention from increased Russian military activity close to Ukraine.
The EU’s chief executive said coming days would be decisive.
At least eight people have died along the 200 kilometre long land border between Poland and Belarus, including from cold and exhaustion. The sparsely populated area of lakes, swamps and forests is becoming even more hostile to people trying to keep warm around bonfires through the cold November nights.
Polish border guards said on Monday several hundred people had gathered on the Belarusian side of a closed border crossing point in Kuznica and might try to get into Poland.
Maas and Borrell urged Warsaw to allow humanitarian aid on the frontier, where Poland has deployed some 20,000 police, border guards and soldiers.
Poland’s nationalist government also came under criticism from rights activists for seeking to cut off all the migrants without giving individuals a chance to claim asylum.
Eastern EU states Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have warned of a risk of military conflict. Their presidents and Poland’s Andrzej Duda said on Monday Lukashenko should be held accountable for human trafficking.
Poland and Lithuania are considering requesting NATO consultations on the situation under the military alliances’ collective security provisions.
– With reporting by ROBIN EMMOTT, PHILIP BLENKINSOP, MARIA KISELYOVA, DMITRY ANTONOV, TOM BALMFORTH, VLADIMIR SOLDATKIN, OLZHAS AUYEZOV, ALEXANDER RATZ, THOMAS ESCRITT and PAWEL FLORKIEWICZ.
