Thousands of migrants remain on the border between Poland and Belarus, in freezing temperatures and difficult conditions. “It’s not a migratory crisis, it’s a migratory attack” conducted by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, estimated Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs, Thursday 11 November, on BFMTV. “What the Belarusian regime is doing is human trafficking”, for his part declared Gabriel Attal, spokesman for the government, the day before, during the report of the Council of Ministers.
>> We explain to you why the situation is explosive on the border between Poland and Belarus
France is not the only country to blame the Belarusian authorities in this influx of migrants. European and American members of the UN Security Council on Thursday condemned a “orchestrated instrumentalization of human beings” by Minsk on the border with Poland in order to “destabilize the external border of the European Union”. Warsaw accuses Minsk of issuing transit visas to nationals of several countries in order to attract candidates for exile, to transport them to the border and even to provide them with tools to cut the fence. Franceinfo details the elements that base these accusations.
Because Belarus encourages and facilitates the influx of migrants
“Thousands of migrants are used, instrumentalised, transported by plane, then by bus, massed at the borders of several countries, Latvia, Lithuania and more recently, and more strongly, Poland”, said Gabriel Attal.
What about the facts? Belarusian company Belavia “has been operating two direct flights per week since the beginning of November” from Beirut, the Lebanese capital, to Minsk in Belarus, reports The world (subscribers article). “Potentially, nearly 400 passengers per week. Before, there was only one weekly flight”, specifies the daily.
The travelers are mainly from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran. Some also come from Iraqi Kurdistan. Some 3,000 Kurds have left the region in the past three months, and 1,600 of them have reached Belarus on a tourist visa, the Kurdistan Refugee Association told AFP.
According to Fouad Mamend, honorary consul of Belarus in Erbil, Kurds go through travel agencies to obtain tourist visas and tickets for indirect journeys to Belarus, Minsk is no longer served by direct flights from Iraqi Kurdistan. His claims join the findings of a BBC investigation (in English), published at the end of October, showing how Belarus is helping exile candidates to reach Europe. “On site, the people we spoke to told us that they had benefited from visa facilities and had arrived legally in Belarus”, explains Maëva Poulet, journalist from France 24 who followed a humanitarian organization on the Polish border.
“Some say they arrived by means of formulas including the plane ticket, a few days in hotel then the transport towards the border.”
This trip can be done with taxis, which drop migrants off near the border, as if they were simple tourists (around 0’58 “in the video below).
To curb this dynamic, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called on member states to consider measures against airlines bringing migrants to Belarus. Brussels has also established contacts with 13 countries in which “abuse” were observed, where thefts were used to “the instrumentalization of migrants”, said Peter Stano, spokesman for the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Because it supervises migrants on the spot with armed men
Migrants also told France 24 “to have been directed towards the crossing points by the Belarusian security forces”. Indeed, men in military uniform and armed escort migrants, as shown by France 2 in this subject (around 0’40 “).
Sometimes Belarusian forces prevent tired exile candidates from turning back. “I wanted to turn around to go back to Baghdad, but a soldier told me that it was forbidden and that I had to stay at the border”Saad Ibrahim Al-Attar, a 65-year-old Iraqi man, who is on the border between Poland and Belarus, told franceinfo.
>> REPORT. On the borders of Europe, migrants trapped in a “hybrid war” between Belarus and Poland
NGOs assisting migrants there report that Belarusian forces are even helping those seeking exile to cross the border into Poland with ladders or by cutting barbed wire. This is also what Saad Ibrahim Al-Attar told franceinfo. “For three days I told them [aux forces de l’ordre biélorusses] that I had the right to travel in the country with my visa, but they refused “, he said.
“They cut the barbed wire themselves [installés par la Pologne] and they pushed everyone through. “
Saad Ibrahim Al-Attar, Iraqi migrantto franceinfo
According to Poland, at least 3,000 to 4,000 migrants have arrived since Monday at its border with Belarus. And according to the spokesman of the Polish government, 10,000 people in Belarusian territory are “ready to cross the border”.
Because this crisis comes after European Union sanctions
Alexander Lukashenko is accused of organizing this “hybrid attack”, as the head of Lithuanian diplomacy called it. Indeed, the Belarusian president is suspected of orchestrating the arrival of migrants and refugees in response to European sanctions against his country after its brutal repression of the opposition. “We use human beings, men, women, children, that we trap at a border, that we threaten, to put pressure on the European Union because there are sanctions that have been taken from repression and arrest of opponents after the controversial re-election of President Lukashenko “, said, for example, Gabriel Attal, Wednesday. The Belarusian president denies this. However, at the end of May, he warned the Europeans that Belarus would no longer stop “drugs and migrants” on the way to Europe, as recalled International mail.
Heavy Western sanctions have pushed Alexander Lukashenko to move closer to Moscow, but Belarus and Russia reject all accusations, referring responsibility for the flow of migrants to Western military interventions in the Middle East.
Yauheni Kryzhanouski, doctor in political science, teacher-researcher at Sciences Po Strasbourg, specialist in protest movements in Belarus, identifies at the microphone of France Culture “two roots to this situation”. The first, according to him, “It is the political crisis in Belarus, the mass protests which began in August 2020 and which provoked brutal repression by the Belarusian authorities and which resulted in sanctions from the European Union”.
The second, he continues, is “the Turkish precedent, the agreement between the European Union and Turkey in 2016 on migrants, which forced the European Union to stop criticism against Turkey”. And to conclude: “Inspired by this question, the Belarusian authorities have decided to use migratory flows as an instrument to react to European sanctions.”
“This hostage-taking is new”, estimates on franceinfo Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, emeritus research director at the CNRS, specialist in migration policies.
“It is one of the expressions among others of this hostage-taking of migrants to manage a form of diplomacy, of conflict on the international scene.”
Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, specialist in migration issuesto franceinfo
For the academic, “we must find a completely organized and structural response, and then ensure the humanitarian daily life for the people”. And to conclude: “One day, there will be the trial of all this management of migratory flows that we have in Europe.”