RUKLA, Lithuania — The emigrants hitchhiked overnight to the Dysna River, the border of their native Belarus. They thought they could wade across the frigid waters, but the spot they chose in haste proved to be so deep they had to swim.
On the other side, at dawn two weeks ago, they found a house with a light on and asked for the police. They were fleeing the authoritarian regime of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, and seeking asylum in neighboring Lithuania, a member of the European Union. Taken to a makeshift camp at a border guard station, they joined about a dozen Iraqis, some Chechens and someone from Southeast Asia.
“We’ve been here for weeks, months,” a migrant told them, according to one of the Belarusians, Aleksandr Dobriyanik. “We know you’ll leave here in just a couple days.”
Two streams of migration, and two forms of human desperation, are converging in the swamps and forests of northeastern Europe. There are the Iraqis and others whom Mr. Lukashenko is channeling through Belarus into Lithuania and Poland, a migration crisis orchestrated by an autocrat eager to provoke the West. And then there are Belarusians fleeing Mr. Lukashenko, amid a wave of repression inside Belarus that has produced thousands of arrests.
Crossing from East to West, the two groups briefly share the same fate, bunking together in border camps and migrant centers. But soon their lives diverge again: Most Belarusians are quickly assured of staying in Lithuania and are allowed to move freely, while the others spend months detained in cramped containers, awaiting near-certain rejection of their asylum claims.
The differing treatment underscores the West’s staunch support for the Belarusian opposition — and illustrates the harsh moral choices being made by European countries determined to resist migration from other continents. Lithuania, a small, ethnically homogeneous nation, is on the front lines of both migrant waves, casting itself as a bulwark of the West, sheltering Belarusian dissidents while refusing entry to others.
“They blend in and society accepts them,” Evelina Gudzinskaite, the head of Lithuania’s migration department, said of Belarusians. “We are quite xenophobic,” she said, adding that she was half-joking, “but also quite rational, I think.”
Lithuania has issued more than 6,700 “humanitarian” visas for Belarusians since the uprising against Mr. Lukashenko’s fraudulent 2020 re-election sparked a crackdown in which anyone who sympathized with the opposition is a potential target. It has approved 71 asylum requests from Belarusians this year. The U.S. State Department commended the country last week for “offering safe haven to many Belarusian democracy advocates,” including Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition leader.
Lithuania has borders with Belarus, where a totalitarian dictatorship operates. Maybe there are many safe states in the Middle East without war? Is Lithuania the closest safe country to Yemen, Iraq and the Congo?
Belarusians are real refugees running away from totalitarian regime which is not afraid to torture and kill their own citizents
Immigrants from Middle East paid thousands of euros to get into said totalitarian regime to take a part in human trafficking business aimed to destabilitze European Union.
We should welcome Belarusians with open arms and kick out immigrants to their country of choice to spend a winter in.
Woo-hoo! I am so proud of my based country Lithuania! There is no benefit for us in taking in people from Afririca and Midfle East, there will only be detriment snd they won’t fit in. We get to decide who gets to live here and if we decide we only take in fellow ehtnic Eurropaens, then it is our right and it must be respected.
Lithuanians are not idiots. We see how shambolic and acrimonious and “anti-wight” US, UK society has become,directly as a result of large scale rasial dyeversity,so why would we try to copy them? We only have one home and we must protect it. Once you open the box of panadora you can never close it again.
I dunno, how about not throwing rocks and thick branches at the police forces of the country you try to enter? Maybe the approval rate would go up, just a hunch.
Though 2015 ruined the PR of Iraqis and Afghans, possibly for good.
>found a house with a light on and *asked for the police*
Compare it to “exercise perceived right to move freely in the direction of greatest gradient of social system wealth, ignoring law and local customs on the way” and you may – just may – see the reason.
Nice, that’s how it’s supposed to work
That’s exactly how an international asylum system should work.
“Lithuania helps actual refugees but not weaponized economic migrants”
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-For those who can’t access to this article-
RUKLA, Lithuania — The emigrants hitchhiked overnight to the Dysna River, the border of their native Belarus. They thought they could wade across the frigid waters, but the spot they chose in haste proved to be so deep they had to swim.
On the other side, at dawn two weeks ago, they found a house with a light on and asked for the police. They were fleeing the authoritarian regime of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, and seeking asylum in neighboring Lithuania, a member of the European Union. Taken to a makeshift camp at a border guard station, they joined about a dozen Iraqis, some Chechens and someone from Southeast Asia.
“We’ve been here for weeks, months,” a migrant told them, according to one of the Belarusians, Aleksandr Dobriyanik. “We know you’ll leave here in just a couple days.”
Two streams of migration, and two forms of human desperation, are converging in the swamps and forests of northeastern Europe. There are the Iraqis and others whom Mr. Lukashenko is channeling through Belarus into Lithuania and Poland, a migration crisis orchestrated by an autocrat eager to provoke the West. And then there are Belarusians fleeing Mr. Lukashenko, amid a wave of repression inside Belarus that has produced thousands of arrests.
Crossing from East to West, the two groups briefly share the same fate, bunking together in border camps and migrant centers. But soon their lives diverge again: Most Belarusians are quickly assured of staying in Lithuania and are allowed to move freely, while the others spend months detained in cramped containers, awaiting near-certain rejection of their asylum claims.
The differing treatment underscores the West’s staunch support for the Belarusian opposition — and illustrates the harsh moral choices being made by European countries determined to resist migration from other continents. Lithuania, a small, ethnically homogeneous nation, is on the front lines of both migrant waves, casting itself as a bulwark of the West, sheltering Belarusian dissidents while refusing entry to others.
“They blend in and society accepts them,” Evelina Gudzinskaite, the head of Lithuania’s migration department, said of Belarusians. “We are quite xenophobic,” she said, adding that she was half-joking, “but also quite rational, I think.”
Lithuania has issued more than 6,700 “humanitarian” visas for Belarusians since the uprising against Mr. Lukashenko’s fraudulent 2020 re-election sparked a crackdown in which anyone who sympathized with the opposition is a potential target. It has approved 71 asylum requests from Belarusians this year. The U.S. State Department commended the country last week for “offering safe haven to many Belarusian democracy advocates,” including Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition leader.
Lithuania has borders with Belarus, where a totalitarian dictatorship operates. Maybe there are many safe states in the Middle East without war? Is Lithuania the closest safe country to Yemen, Iraq and the Congo?
Refugee policies across Eastern Europe in one picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLJyglKW4AA4i1B?format=jpg&name=900×900
Belarusians are real refugees running away from totalitarian regime which is not afraid to torture and kill their own citizents
Immigrants from Middle East paid thousands of euros to get into said totalitarian regime to take a part in human trafficking business aimed to destabilitze European Union.
We should welcome Belarusians with open arms and kick out immigrants to their country of choice to spend a winter in.
Woo-hoo! I am so proud of my based country Lithuania! There is no benefit for us in taking in people from Afririca and Midfle East, there will only be detriment snd they won’t fit in. We get to decide who gets to live here and if we decide we only take in fellow ehtnic Eurropaens, then it is our right and it must be respected.
Lithuanians are not idiots. We see how shambolic and acrimonious and “anti-wight” US, UK society has become,directly as a result of large scale rasial dyeversity,so why would we try to copy them? We only have one home and we must protect it. Once you open the box of panadora you can never close it again.
I dunno, how about not throwing rocks and thick branches at the police forces of the country you try to enter? Maybe the approval rate would go up, just a hunch.
Though 2015 ruined the PR of Iraqis and Afghans, possibly for good.
>found a house with a light on and *asked for the police*
Compare it to “exercise perceived right to move freely in the direction of greatest gradient of social system wealth, ignoring law and local customs on the way” and you may – just may – see the reason.
Nice, that’s how it’s supposed to work
That’s exactly how an international asylum system should work.
“Lithuania helps actual refugees but not weaponized economic migrants”