Belarus, led by dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko, proposed this Thursday (18th) a plan to alleviate the migration crisis on the country’s border with the European Union. The strategy, so far lacking in detail, would lead the EU to take in 2,000 immigrants, while Minsk would send another 5,000 back to their countries of origin.
The European bloc has yet to comment on the proposal, and a German government source said Prime Minister Angela Merkel, who spoke by phone with Lukachenko this week, has not signed any such agreement.
In a first sign of possible relief from the border crisis, some 430 Iraqis boarded a Minsk airport for a flight back to Iraq on Thursday, the first of its kind since August. Along with migrants from Afghanistan, migrants from Iraq are the ones who most occupy the borders with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
The EU is trying to interrupt what it says is a policy of the Lukachenko dictatorship to push migrants towards the bloc’s countries, in revenge for sanctions applied after the regime’s crackdown on protesters who took to the streets to protest against the Belarusian leader’s re-election for the year past, in a lawsuit considered rigged.
According to information from the official Belta news agency confirmed by the Reuters news agency, Belarus has emptied the two main migrant camps on the Polish border, taking people there to nearby warehouses.
After talking to Merkel, a spokeswoman for the Lukashenko regime said the German prime minister had agreed to take up the proposal to create a humanitarian corridor for discussion in the EU, something Berlin denied.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said the country would not accept migrants from the Belarus-Polish border. “We are not going to give in to pressure,” he declared at a press conference in Warsaw after talking to his Polish counterpart.
Also on Thursday, an African migrant whose identity was unknown was buried in a cemetery in Poland, near the Belarus border — this is the second funeral of a migrant there this week. The situation at the border raises the concern of the international community due to the fragile humanitarian conditions.
As some migrants return to Iraq, hundreds try to cross the border into the EU. Poland said the number of attempts to cross its border into Belarus increased on Wednesday (17), with 501 attempts, with 200 migrants detained after breaking through the barriers. In another episode, dozens of people threw stones, injuring three soldiers and a police officer.
In an unusual signal, Russian President Vladimir Putin, an ally of Lukachenko, called on Thursday for the regime to initiate dialogues with the democratic opposition.
During a speech in Moscow, the Kremlin leader said he was acutely aware of the country’s domestic problems. “But Russia will certainly continue its approach of strengthening ties and deepening the integration process with Belarus,” he said.
It was unclear which opposition figures Putin was encouraging Lukashenko to speak with. Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Svetlana Tikhanovskai, the main opposition candidate in last year’s elections, said the conversation could take place, as long as prerequisites were met. “All political prisoners must be released as a precondition, and the violence must end.”
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