Lithuania’s prime minister today accused Belarus of using migrants as a means of retaliating against the European Union, and said he would build a wall and deploy more people to the border to prevent migrants from crossing illegally into the territory.
Reuters reports that in retaliation for EU sanctions, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced on May 26 that he would no longer prevent migrants from entering the EU, with Lithuania and Latvia, Belarus’ neighbors, bearing the brunt.
In response, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said that the government will respond by increasing the number of border patrols and building a wall on the border.
Simonyte pointed out that Lithuania is considering the implementation of controls on the borders with other EU countries to stop the influx of migrants to other EU countries through the Schengen Treaty.
Simmonit also mentioned that Belarus is constantly recruiting migrants to Minsk, and that they have found evidence on migrants to support this argument.
She told Reuters, “For example, they have travel agencies offering flights between Minsk and Baghdad, and other countries with Belarus have travel agencies operating to ‘attract’ tourists to Minsk.”
Simmonit said Baghdad is the main conduit for these people to fly to Belarus, but she also did not rule out that some people get on the flights from Istanbul.
Lithuanian officials passed a copy of a document to Reuters as evidence, which noted that two Minsk travel agencies asked the Belarusian Foreign Ministry to obtain visas for three Iraqi citizens on May 27 and June 7, respectively.
Lithuanian officials also recovered four boarding passes from one of the migrants, which showed a flight from Istanbul to Minsk on May 27 on the airline Belavia.
A spokesman for the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis is expected to visit Baghdad next week to discuss the migration issue with the Iraqi government.
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