Belarus: Cynically funneling migrants toward the EU
President Alexander Lukashenko is “weaponizing vulnerable people” out of spite, said The Guardian (U.K.) in an editorial. The Belarusian dictator was infuriated when the European Union slapped sanctions on his regime last year, after he rigged his re-election and cracked down brutally on pro-democracy protesters. “In retaliation,” Lukashenko began issuing tourist visas to people in Africa and the Middle East, flying them to Minsk and then busing them to the borders of EU members Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania. There, Belarusian security forces tell the migrants to enter the EU and seek asylum, even handing them wire cutters to slice through border fences. “Lukashenko’s actions are cynical and despicable.” Thousands of migrants—including children and the elderly—are now trapped at the border zone in freezing conditions with no food or shelter. “Yet Poland is treating the arrival of these desperate people not as a humanitarian crisis but an invasion.” It has sent thousands of troops to the border and, in violation of EU law, is expelling any migrants that enter its territory. Poland’s nationalist government now plans “a Trump-style border wall” and is fanning anti-migrant and anti-EU sentiment to benefit itself politically.
Poland should have been prepared for this crisis, said Slawomir Sierakowski in Wiadomosci.onet.pl (Poland). It was obvious in early summer, when Lukashenko began dumping migrants on Lithuania’s doorstep, that we would be next. But Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was squabbling with EU officials who had condemned its attacks on the independence of Polish courts, and it refused to ask the bloc for help. Now our troops are standing “several dozen yards away from Belarusian soldiers,” who we know “are in love with violence.” The smallest misstep could spark a bloody conflict. Yet we can’t count on support from our NATO allies, because our government has alienated them with its ugly behavior. Russian President Vladimir Putin is the real mastermind of this crisis, said Stefan Kornelius in Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany). He is using Lukashenko as his puppet to accomplish a long-term goal: destabilizing the EU. During the last migrant crisis, in 2015, Germany pressured other EU nations to accept hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, causing a populist, anti-immigrant backlash across the Continent. Putin is banking on Germany being just as welcoming this time around.
But Putin and Lukashenko will also benefit if we shun these migrants, said Peter Wolodarski in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden). The dictators want to show “that the Western world lacks the morals that they themselves don’t care about.” So long as the EU treats this as a border issue, not a humanitarian disaster, we are giving Putin the optics he wants. Please help us, said Syrian refugee Nidal Ibrahim in AlJazeera.com (Qatar). I’m a former schoolteacher and I’ve been trapped at the Polish border since Oct. 5. While my wife and three children are waiting in Turkey, my friend Muhammad’s four children are with us, hungry and freezing. I have seen other asylum seekers perish from starvation, thirst, and cold. “Either someone takes pity on us, or we die.”