ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Kurdish and Iraqi migrants have flooded into Lithuania from the eastern European country of Belarus in what Lithuania says is a politically motivated move weaponising migrants to pressure the European Union to lift sanctions on Minsk.
“We are around 700 people here … The number of Kurds are 400 to 500. We have people here whose family are in prison and their children are out [in the camp]. There are people in prison that have cancer, or heart problems. There is an old woman aged 80-90 years and she is in prison. Where is the conscience and human rights here?,” Kurdish migrant Karwan Faizulla told Rudaw’s Ala Shally on Thursday from Pabrade camp.
The migrants include Kurds, Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans and Africans, according to Faizulla who has been kept at the camp for around two months after he was deported back to Lithuania from Germany.
“There are people who have been here six to nine months,” he said, saying the situation in the camp is “very bad.”
The European Union (EU) placed sanctions on Belarus in June over “enduring repression” and the forced landing of a Ryanair flight carrying a prominent Belarussian human rights defender, then in exile in Poland.
Speaking to Rudaw on Thursday, Lithuania’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mantas Adomenas said their neighbour is pushing migrants into Lithuania in order to pressure the EU into dropping the sanctions.
“This is not a usual kind of migration. The Belarus regime is trying to push those people into Lithuania in order to increase pressure on Vilnius and so more people who are seeking migration are becoming instruments in the hands of the criminal regime,” he told Bestoon Khalid.
“Lithuania, having the longest EU border with Belarus, it was the obvious target, so this is a political attempt to put pressure on the government and make the EU step down on sanctions which are hurting [President] Lukashenko’s regime and the poor migrants have been caught in the crossfire.”
"We have been staying here for a month now. The situation is extremely miserable. Police and commandos treat us migrants very badly. People have been electrocuted, people have been tortured with boots. People drink toilet water. The situation is terrible," Bilal Akram told Rudaw.
"Our demand is we want them to release us and find a solution for us. Why have they put us in jail? What is the reason? Nobody knows why," said another migrant, Barzan.
More than 4,000 migrants crossing from Belarus have been detained by Lithuanian authorities so far this year, a much higher number than in 2020 when it was a total of 81, Radio Liberty reported on Wednesday, citing officials.
“We have seen the situation being worse, it’s deteriorating. More people are arriving and it’s totally unaccepted,” Ylva Johansson, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs said in a presser earlier this week.
“This is a provocation of the Lukashenko regime, it’s totally unacceptable, and we have to make clear that there is no free access to the EU territory...That’s why it’s important we, as the whole EU, now stand together with Lithuania to protect our common external borders towards Belarus,” added Johansson.
Back in the camp, Faizulla says conditions are spartan – with floods and no heating.
The migrants were led to believe they can freely travel to the next country once they arrive in Lithuania from Belarus, he said, but this seems to be a pipe dream so far.
“A lot of people are stuck here, they can’t go out…The smugglers told them when you enter Lithuania you will be quarantined for three or ten days then you can go out of the camp and go to other European countries, such as Germany. But it wasn’t like that. Here we are being delayed here six months to one year; people are being imprisoned for no reason,” he added.
“Those who are in prison are in a very bad situation, they can’t go out, they can’t talk to their family, they don’t have phones,” Faizulla noted, saying he doesn’t know what will happen to them.
"No one says I will deport you or let you go out, or anything.”
Ahmed Shabab, another Kurdish migrant, said they were recently kicked out of apartments and forced into a camp.
“I came here in January. When we came here they respected us and helped us, we were fine. But now there are so many migrants, Kurds from all four parts of Kurdistan came here. That was really bad for us. They recently kicked us out of the apartments and put us in camps. It rains daily here, our situation has become really bad,” he said over the phone.
Shabab took a route familiar with many of his fellow migrants – a flight via Minsk.
“Our smugglers were from Duhok and Zakho. We came through a very easy way, we came to Belarus on a plane, from Belarus he put us in a car and brought us into Lithuania.”
“We are waiting for a solution to rescue us from here … to send us to Germany, to France to a country where humanity is better. Our situation here is really bad,” says Shabab, adding that only a few people are allowed to go out of the camp.
Ari Jalal, head of The Summit Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs (Lutka) said that migration from Iraq has developed due to closer ties between Iraq and Belarus.
Jalal added that the young people are encouraged to go to Belarus and told they will be taken to Lithuania by car. Some of them were also led to believe that they can take flights from Lithuania to their target country.
“All these promises are untrue. Upon the arrival of migrants to Lithuania they will be immediately arrested and put in camps. It will take at least six months to stay so that they will decide on your fate, which for most is deportation,” he said, noting that smugglers take between $10,000 to $17,000 from each migrant.
According to data provided to Rudaw by Lutka in June, 26,972 Iraqi citizens have sought asylum in Europe in 2021 so far, and five people have lost their lives on the way. He explained those numbers do not include people who travelled legally and have not returned, as well as those under 18.
On Sunday, more than 140 Iraqi and Kurdish immigrants in Turkey directed a message to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) through the International Foundation for Iraqi Refugees, saying they were forced to immigrate “due to the instability of the Kurdistan Region and Iraq in terms of security, politics and religion.”
The Red Cross has warned that Lithuania’s push back of migrants who are trying to cross the border does not comply with international law. “Pushbacks of people seeking asylum are not compatible with the Geneva Convention on Refugee Status, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other human rights instruments” Egle Samuchovaite, program director for Lithuania’s Red Cross, told The Associated Press.
“They are going to be enclosed in the migrant camp and until they go back, there is no way for them into western Europe, there’s no route open … People who sold them this trip into Lithuania as a sort of easy way into the EU, they really deceived them,”Adomenas said, adding that more than half of the migrants are Iraqi.
“This is a totally new challenge for us, so we don’t have a way to house them, they are housed in sort of very poor circumstances not because we intentionally want to harm them but because we simply have no premises to put thousands of people who suddenly entered our country.”
The EU diplomatic service summoned Belarus's representative in Brussels to demand an end to the "instrumentalisation" of migrants crossing into Lithuania, a spokeswoman said on Thursday, AFP reported, and Brussels has urged Iraq to halt flights to Minsk.
Iraqi Airways announced on Thursday evening that it is suspending flights to Belarus for one week.
