Belarusian officials are said to have sent migrants across the border to Lithuania. A video shows them cutting open the fence beforehand. The refugees from Afghanistan were picked up and had to go to a clinic with frostbite.
According to the Lithuanian border guard, Belarus illegally smuggled migrants with frostbite on their feet across the border to neighboring EU country Lithuania. Belarusian security forces are said to have damaged the border fence newly built by Lithuania in the wake of the migration crisis in late summer 2021 and sent a total of four migrants across the border, according to the border guard. A video released by the authorities in Vilnius is intended to document the incident.
The recordings were made on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border near the Lavoriskes checkpoint. There, three masked people, who, according to the information, were probably Belarusian border officials, cut through the fence and a barbed wire barrier with special tools. After that, they sent the migrants waiting in a forest to Lithuanian territory, as can be seen in the video shown by Lithuanian media. A little later, the illegal cross-border commuters were then picked up in Lithuania. When they were checked, it turned out that the four men came from Afghanistan. Three of them reportedly complained about their state of health and were taken to a clinic for examination – two of them with suspected frostbite.
The migrants are said to have reported physical violence used against them by Belarusian officials, it said. Lithuania has launched an investigation into illegal crossing of the state border. The Baltic state has a border with Belarus that is almost 680 kilometers long and is part of the EU’s external border. The situation there escalated in late summer and autumn 2021: Thousands of people tried to enter the EU illegally. The European Union accuses the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of having brought migrants from crisis regions to the EU’s external border in an organized manner.
The government in Vilnius responded by increasing border protection and building hundreds of kilometers of border fences. The Lithuanian border guard has been rejecting migrants since the beginning of August 2021. Lithuania has repeatedly come under criticism for its strict line: Most recently, the aid organization Doctors Without Borders accused Vilnius of pushing people back despite the freezing temperatures.
