A group of five volunteers in a garage near the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, pack matches, warm gloves, socks, a glass and a spoon into plastic bags to be given to migrants at their country’s border who are about to leave. be re-launched in Belarus.
“It will not change the fate of immigrants, but that is the best I can do. So I try to help “, says Domantas Zekas who works in the middle of mountains from boxes of food, clothes and other basic necessities that the volunteers pack.
Last week, about 6,000 packages of food – canned meat, beans and corn, cookies and noodles – packaged by volunteers were distributed to migrants at the border.
The food is offered by organizations such as the Red Cross, the International Organization for Migration and Caritas, and is packaged in cooperation with members of the Lithuanian Border Guard, which provided the garage and gives the packages to its members patrolling the border.
More than 4,000 migrants from the Middle East and Africa have entered Lithuania this year and more are arriving from Belarus, with the EU accusing Minsk of staging a border crisis in retaliation for Western sanctions against Belarus. .
Since the beginning of August, Lithuania has repatriated about 7,000 migrants to Belarus. Activists complain that in this way vulnerable people are put in danger.
Lithuanian authorities have allowed just over 160 migrants to remain in the country for humanitarian reasons, which Vilnius defines as a “real threat to health and life”. MP Thomas Tomilina complained to Reuters that the decisions to repatriate migrants were made by patrolling border guards, who relied on vague instructions, without the involvement of humanitarian or child rights groups.
An Iraqi family with four children under the age of 10 was arrested in Lithuania, near Belarus, on November 6 while it was freezing. They were sent back the next morning, Tomilinas said.
Border guard Rokas Pukinskas commented that the migrants were being given food and allowed to warm up and apply to stay in Lithuania, as long as they could support their asylum application. But he stressed that they can not enter the country simply because they have children with them.
Volunteers pack aid in the garage without discussing what is happening in the woods.
“We are not participating in the promotions and we did not create this situation. “We can at least take the humanitarian side of the issue so that people can survive.”
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