“It’s a crisis organized from scratch”, reacted François Gemenne, migration specialist and teacher at Sciences-Po and the Sorbonne, regarding the current migration crisis between Belarus and the European Union. According to him, the Belarusian regime “precipitate” at its border, migrants used “as a kind of diplomatic lever”, for “lobby” on Europeans. “As long as we do not have organized, secure roads and a system for distributing asylum seekers within the European Union, we will remain vulnerable to smugglers, whether they are traffickers, bandits or dictators. in authoritarian regimes “, explained François Gemenne, calling for “to find means to put pressure on Alexandre Loukachenko and Vladimir Poutine so that this migratory blackmail stops”.
franceinfo: The European Union accuses Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating a migration crisis on its border with Poland, is this the case?
François Gemenne: Very clearly, this is a crisis organized from scratch. Belarus brings thousands of migrants from Lebanon, Iraq and sometimes Afghanistan to its territory and rushes them to the border like barbed wire flesh. She uses them as a kind of diplomatic lever to put pressure on the European Union and to try to destabilize it because Belarus obviously understood that the migration issue and asylum issues were somehow the Achilles heel of the European Union. President Alexander Lukashenko knows very well that this risks causing a political crisis.
What is the role of Vladimir Putin?
Alexander Lukashenko would not have acted in this way if he had not had the approval of Vladimir Putin, I even suspect that he is acting on a commissioned basis. We know to what extent Vladimir Putin seeks to destabilize the other powers.
“For Europeans, these images of migrants massing at the border are very anxiety-provoking. This risks encouraging the emergence of nationalist and extremist regimes in Europe and this is also what Vladimir Poutin is looking for.”
François Gemenne, migration specialist and teacher at Sciences-Po and the Sorbonneto franceinfo
Do we know how many people are on the border between Belarus and Poland and what can we do?
It’s hard to say. It is estimated that there could be between 20,000 and 30,000 people. These migrants are trapped and find themselves stranded at the border in impossible conditions. There is a humanitarian imperative. There have already been a dozen deaths at the border. It is very cold. There are people who suffer from hypothermia. Humanitarian relief must be sent to them to prevent more lives being lost. Then, we must find ways to put pressure on Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Poutine so that this migratory blackmail stops. We must deploy an arsenal of diplomatic or financial measures and then, politically, the Union will have to adopt a real asylum and immigration policy so as not to be so vulnerable to this type of blackmail. As long as we do not have organized and secure roads and a system for distributing asylum seekers within the European Union, we will remain vulnerable to smugglers whether they are traffickers, bandits, or dictators in authoritarian regimes.