Vilnius, Lithuania
Reuters
The United States is concerned about the flow of Middle Eastern and African migrants from Belarus into Lithuania, a US diplomat said.
Lithuania began building a 550 kilometre long razor wire barrier on its border with Belarus on Friday after accusing Belarusian authorities of flying in migrants from abroad to send illegally into the European Union.
Lithuanian army soldiers install razor wire on border with Belarus in Druskininkai, Lithuania, on 9th July. PICTURE: Reuters/Janis Laizans
“We are watching it very closely and with concern”, said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent in an interview with Lithuanian news website 15min.lt, published on Sunday.
He said the “pressure tactic” is comparable to migrant flows from Russia to Finland and Norway in 2015.
“That’s something that we call on Belarusian authorities to stop – intentionally pushing migrants from other countries to the Lithuanian border”, said Kent.
Meanwhile, Lithuania will propose on Monday expanding European Union sanctions on Belarus for sending illegal migrants across the border into the EU, its foreign affairs minister’s spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday.
“We will propose to consider gradually expanding sectorial sanctions”, the spokeswoman said. European Union foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels on Friday.
Earlier, the government said the military-style wire coil would cost €4.9 million to put up and run along most of the frontier, which passes over sparsely populated areas and large stretches of forest and marsh.
At a later date the barrier will be reinforced with a two metre high border fence topped by razor wire, costing an additional €41 million, the interior ministry said.
Hundreds of migrants have crossed from Belarus in recent days, most of them Iraqi citizens, Lithuania has said.
Belarus in May decided to allow migrants to enter Lithuania in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the bloc after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land on its soil and arrested a dissident blogger who was on board.
“If someone thinks we will close our border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and will become a holding site for those running from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunis and further down Africa – if someone thinks so, he is misguided, to say the least”, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said last Tuesday.
Belarus is guarding the border now only as much as it is “profitable” to it, and as much as it can financially, the President said.
Lithuania responded last Wednesday by announcing it would put up the frontier barrier and deploy troops to prevent migrants crossing illegally into its territory.
In a related move, Lithuania’s parliament will meet this Tuesday to urgently pass legislation streamlining asylum application reviews, including shortening their initial review to no more than 10 days, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said.
All people who crossed the border illegally would be kept locked up, the draft law says, meaning an end to occasional short trips outside detention that are currently permitted.
Just over 1,500 people crossed the frontier illegally from Belarus this year, with 900 of them coming over in the first nine days of July.
Simonyte told the national broadcaster she did not expect the migrant flow from Belarus to subside on its own.
“As the Belarus regime is making money from these people for visa charges and, I think, gets other income from them as well – it would be difficult to expect any positive trend without additional means of impact”, she said.
Simonyte said on Wednesday Belarus had been offering migrants flights to Minsk, citing documents found on at least one migrant who had reached Lithuania. She said the main airport from where people flew into Belarus was Baghdad, and her foreign minister said people also came Turkey.
The Lithuanian-Belarus border is 679 kilometres long. About 78 kilometres was fenced in preceeding years, and about 258 kilometres are monitored electronically, according to the interior ministry.
