(Sokolka) The EU and the United States announced on Monday that they were preparing new sanctions against the Belarusian regime, unconvinced by assurances from Minsk to bring migrants camping at the Polish border “home” after having, according to Westerners , orchestrated their influx.
” Warning ! Any illegal border crossing is prohibited. You risk criminal prosecution, ”the Polish border guards repeated Monday over loudspeakers to hundreds of migrants massed Monday at the Brousgui border post (Belarus), opposite the Polish town of Kuznica.
Images broadcast by Belarusian media showed them around campfires, lying in sleeping bags in the shade of barbed wire or facing helmeted members of the Polish forces guarding the border area.
Manipulated and gripped
Caught up along the border between the two countries, two to three thousand people in total, often from Iraqi Kurdistan, including many children, were preparing Monday evening to spend another night outside in freezing temperatures.
“We wait here, between Polish and Belarusian soldiers. They won’t let us go anywhere, ”25-year-old Iraqi Kurd Aryan Wali Zellmi told AFP on the phone. “I want to go to any country. We are all tired and at the end of the line, ”added an ex-Iraqi truck driver, also on the phone, stranded with his wife and their three children, including an infant and an eight-year-old boy with four limbs amputated.
The Europeans accuse Belarus of having organized since the summer of migratory movements from the Middle East to the Polish and Lithuanian borders in revenge for Western sanctions taken after the repression of the opposition in this country as a result of a contested presidential election.
The EU will adopt new sanctions “in the next few days” against individuals and organizations contributing to the influx of migrants, EU foreign minister Josep Borrell said on Monday after the final. a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the Twenty-Seven in Brussels.
These sanctions will affect “a significant number” of people and entities, he stressed.
“Inhuman” exploitation of migrants
On the same day, the United States also announced “preparing” additional sanctions against Belarus to denounce the “inhuman” exploitation by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko of migratory flows and more broadly “its persistent attacks on democracy, human rights and international standards ”.
Washington has specified in this regard to act “in coordination with the European Union”.
At the same time, talks between the French Head of State Emmanuel Macron and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as well as between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Alexander Lukashenko took place to increase the pressure on the Russian and Belarusian presidents.
According to the Elysee, Mr. Putin, questioned on the migrant crisis on the eastern borders of the European Union, promised to “talk about it” to his Belarusian counterpart.
President Lukashenko, whose re-election in August 2020 was not recognized by the EU, again denied responsibility on Monday.
Polish wall
He even assured that he wanted the migrants to return “to their homes”: “We are ready […] to put them all on planes to take them home. Active work is underway to convince these people, ”he said, according to the Belta state news agency.
But, he insisted, “they don’t want to go back. It is clear that they no longer have a place to return, no more home and have nothing to feed their children there ”.
His words did not seem to convince European foreign ministers.
“I have no reason to believe that what (Mr Lukashenko) is saying is true”, hammered the head of Lithuanian diplomacy Gabrielius Landsbergis.
For its part, Poland announced on Monday that it would begin construction of a wall along the border with Belarus in December, with a view to completing it in the first half of 2022.
Alexander Loukachenko said he was ready on Monday to “defend himself” in the event of European retaliatory measures.
He had previously said he was prepared to cut off Russian gas flow to Europe, but Moscow quickly downplayed the threat. Vladimir Putin called on the Europeans to resume dialogue.
Russia has also rejected the accusations of Warsaw, which sees Moscow as the real sponsor of the migration crisis, amid Russian-Western tensions.
Kremlin invokes “European ideals of humanism”
On Monday, the Kremlin again judged “wrong” to blame Minsk for the crisis and regretted that the EU “ignored European ideals of humanism” by failing to help migrants stranded in the cold.
Warsaw refuses to let these thousands of people enter the EU, which was destabilized from 2015 by the influx of hundreds of thousands of unfortunate people fleeing wars and misery in the Middle East or Afghanistan.
While some groups have crossed barbed wire in recent days, they have often been arrested and sent back to Belarus.
The Belarusian airline company Belavia announced that Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and Yemenis were now banned from flying from Dubai to Belarus, on “decision of the competent authorities of the United Arab Emirates”. Turkey imposed the same restrictions last week.
Finally, the Iraqi government announced the organization on Thursday of a first repatriation flight for Iraqi migrants “on a voluntary basis”.