https://archive.ph/5urdk



Migrants Say Belarusians Took Them to E.U. Border and Supplied Wire Cutters

Iraqi Kurds and other migrants said they were fleeing despair at home, but Belarus encouraged them, offering visas and helping them get to the border.


SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — The sudden surge of migrants to Belarus from the Middle East that is now the focus of a political crisis in Europe was hardly an accident.
The government of Belarus loosened its visa rules in August, Iraqi travel agents said, making a flight to the country a more palatable journey to Europe than the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece.

It increased flights by the state-owned airline, and then actively helped funnel migrants from the capital, Minsk, to the frontiers with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.

And Belarusian security forces gave them directions on how to cross into the European Union countries, even handing out wire cutters and axes to cut through border fences.

These moves, which European leaders have characterized as a cynical ploy to “weaponize” migrants in an effort to punish Europe, opened the gates to people desperate to flee a region plagued by instability and high unemployment.

Now, thousands of people are stranded or hiding along the border in freezing conditions, not wanted by the European Union countries or, circumstances are making clear, by the country that lured them there in the first place.

The human tide has turned cities like Sulaimaniya, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, into bustling ports of departure for migrants eager to take an expensive and risky journey for the chance of a better life in Europe.

As word went viral on social media that Belarus offered a route into Europe, the number of migrants snowballed.

Mala Rawaz, a travel agent in Sulaimaniya, said he had been selling about 100 packages a week for trips to Belarus. The packages included airfare through a third country, transit accommodation and a Belarusian visa.

At the city’s bazaar, Bryar Muhammad, 25, was doing a brisk business on Thursday selling warm clothes.

“Good clothes for Belarus!” he shouted, holding up thick acrylic sweaters and winter jackets pulled from a cardboard box. “For the snow of Belarus!”

Even as young families in Iraq were putting up their homes as collateral to raise money for the journey, evidence mounted that Belarus’s autocratic leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was orchestrating the migration to manufacture a crisis for the European Union.

The Belarusian state-owned airline, Belavia, had increased flights from the Middle East to Minsk, European officials said. The Belarusian authorities eased the issuance of visas through the state-owned travel agency Tsentrkurort, according to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry.

Migrants who reached Minsk were put up in at least three government-owned hotels, according to Latvia’s defense minister, Artis Pabriks, and Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to a Belarusian opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Mr. Pabriks said that Belarusian intelligence agents had been involved in transferring migrants to the borders, and that military buses were used.

Several Iraqi migrants said that the Belarusian security forces provided them with tools to break through the Polish border fence.

Bayar Awat, an Iraqi Kurd stranded on the Belarusian side of the Polish border, said that Belarusian guards had helped his group reach the border by pointing out a route that bypassed the official border crossing and emerged near a gap cut in the border fence.

“The Belarus police guided us to the forest, then pointed directions to lead us inside the forest to keep us away from the official border crossing,” he said.
On Thursday, a Belarusian soldier was overheard on the phone ordering an Iraqi Kurd to direct a group of 400 to 500 migrants from the Lithuanian border toward the Polish border.

“All the people who move here go to Brest,” the soldier told him in broken English, referring to the Belarusian city on the Polish border, because there were too many migrants on the Lithuanian border.

When some migrants have tried to leave the frigid forest to return to Minsk, many have been pushed back by Belarusian guards, leaving the migrants stuck at the border, they said.

I saw that they are all at the polish border. What’s strange is on my dna test it says I have Belarus blood in me. Don’t even know wtf that is. They looked like decent people. They were all out there working in the woods building fires and stuff. I’m not to allowing people into me country but I think they should help them with food or clothing or something

Wait till they hit the US lol

those little sandmen are scared of the water, can't you read

Backed by putin

He out out a bullchit statement distancing himself but he is a grand master chess manoeuvrer

We already received thousands of Afghan refugees.