Violence used against migrants on Belarus' border with Lithuania, Poland: K24 source

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Polish and Lithuanian border guards have forced migrants on their borders to return to Belarus through use of violence, a source told Kurdistan 24 on Tuesday.

According to the source, the border guards allegedly prevented medical assistance and the press from getting close these migrants. The source added that these forces don’t want the media filming their violent actions against the migrants.

Since early 2021, a large number of migrants have been trying to cross Belarus’s border into either Poland or Lithuania. Most of them have faced difficulty reaching western Europe and have had to return to Belarus. 

The majority of these migrants are from Iraq and Syria. They include a large number of Kurds from both of these two countries.

Belarus has facilitated the inflow of migrants from Iraq and Syria into neighboring European countries after sanctions were imposed on it from the international community.

The EU, according to the Council of the European Union website, imposed what it called “restrictive measures” on the country “in response to the fraudulent nature of the August 2020 presidential elections” there.

It also denounced the “intimidation and violent repression of peaceful protesters, opposition members and journalists” in Belarus.

In June 2021, the Council of the EU “introduced new restrictive measures against the Belarusian regime to respond to the escalation of serious human rights violations in Belarus and the violent repression of civil society, democratic opposition and journalists, as well as to the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk on 23 May 2021 and the related detention of journalist Raman Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega.”

Read More: More than 1,500 Iraqis trapped on border of Belarus and Lithuania

In August, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that at least 3,000 people from 37 different countries, including 1,500 Iraqis, were stranded on the border between Belarus and Lithuania. The governments of Estonia and Lithuania called on the Iraqi government to prevent the smuggling of migrants from Iraq into their countries via Belarus.

At that time, the EU calculated that about 2,800 Iraqis had entered Lithuania from Belarus.