Lithuania says Belarus using refugees as ‘political weapon’

Lithuania’s foreign minister accused Belarus on Monday of using illegal migrants as political weapon to put pressure on the European Union because of the bloc’s sanctions on Minsk.

Belarus was flying in migrants from abroad and sending them over the border into EU countries, minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said as he arrived for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The EU should consider imposing more sanctions on Belarus, he said.

Nearly 1,700 migrants have entered Lithuania, an EU state, illegally from Belarus this year, more than 1,000 of them in July alone, according to Lithuania’s border guard service.

Half of them identified themselves as Iraqi citizens.

Landsbergis suggested the migrants were being turned into a means of pressure on the EU, which has imposed a series of sanctions on Belarus since a disputed presidential election last August that was followed by a police crackdown on street protests.

“We need to be very strict with the regimes that are using these sorts of weapons, first of all with sanctions,” he said.

Lithuanian EU lawmaker Rasa Jukneviciene told a meeting with EU and Lithuanian officials that Belarus and Russia were organising human smuggling networks with the help of Iran to fly people to the Lithuanian border, although she did not provide any evidence. Minsk and Moscow deny any such operations.

Lithuania’s foreign ministry has told Reuters it will propose a gradual expansion of the economic sanctions.

Last month, the EU imposed broad economic sanctions on Belarus’ main export industries, and on banks and finance, to try to hit sources of revenue for President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994.

EU leaders were outraged when Belarusian authorities intercepted a passenger plane flying between Athens and Vilnius on May 23 and arrested a dissident journalist and his girlfriend who were on board.

Lukashenko said last week his government would not close its borders with its neighbours and become a “holding site” for migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Reuters requested further comment from Belarus on Monday.

Lithuania began building a 550-km (320-mile) razor wire barrier on its frontier with Belarus on Friday.

Reuters