As of: 07/09/2021 1:41 p.m.
Hundreds of migrants are currently illegally crossing the Belarusian border into Lithuania, waved through by the ruler Lukashenko. Now the Baltic country has started building a border fence.
In view of the rapidly increasing number of illegally entering migrants, Lithuania has started building a wire fence on the border with Belarus. According to a border guard spokesman, soldiers are to erect the barrier at the health resort Druskininkai near the border triangle with Belarus and Poland. The length of this section of the border is 30 kilometers, he said, according to the BNS news agency in Vilnius. In addition, all border sections with Belarus are to be quickly retrofitted with modern technology.
The Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko has repeatedly threatened the EU to let refugees from war zones through – in response to the EU’s sanctions. The 66-year-old said at a government meeting in Minsk this week that he will not stop anyone who wants to go to cozy Europe.
Lithuania, which has an almost 680 kilometer long border with Belarus, is particularly hard hit. After 81 refugees in Lithuania throughout 2020, the authorities have already apprehended more than 1,500 people this year, according to official information from Vilnius, 37 of them within 24 hours.
Mostly people from Africa and the Middle East
Most of the people come from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Most of them have already applied for asylum in Lithuania. The government in Vilnius therefore wants to deal with legislative changes today in order to speed up the examination process. The cabinet had previously declared a state of emergency in order to be able to react more quickly and easily. Lithuania’s President Gintanas Naueseda also convened the national security council of the Baltic EU and NATO country on Monday.
Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte accused Lukashenko of wanting to destabilize the country and the EU. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council Chairman Charles Michel were also concerned about the tense situation at the border. “We condemn all attempts to instrumentalize illegal migration in order to put pressure on the EU member states,” said Michel on a visit to Lithuania last Tuesday.
Von der Leyen spoke of a “politically motivated pattern”. Since the beginning of July, six officers from the EU border protection agency Frontex have also been patrolling the border. Their number is expected to grow to 30 by the end of the month.
The Polish border guards are currently picking up more migrants on the border with Belarus. So far this year there have been 235 refugees, 90 of them since the beginning of July alone, said a spokeswoman for the dpa news agency. There were 114 in all of 2020.