The European Union will step up sanctions against Belarus, which on Monday denounced as “absurd” Western accusations that it was driving a migrant crisis that has left up to 4,000 people stranded in freezing forests on its border with Poland.
EU foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels to agree on further measures pressuring Belarus, where veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko cracked down on protesters challenging as fraudulent a presidential vote in which he had claimed victory.
The 27-nation EU slapped sanctions on Minsk for violating human rights. Less than a year after the August 2020 election, migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo and Cameroon started appearing on Belarus’ land borders with the EU, trying to cross into member states Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
“What we see in Minsk, this inhumane system of using refugees as tools to exert pressure on the European Union, has not improved but has got worse over the last days,” Germany’s EU Minister Haiko Maas said on arriving to talks with his peers.
“We will toughen sanctions on individuals who are involved in this human trafficking, and we will have to talk about the fact that severe economic sanctions are inevitable … We will have to tackle the airlines, too.”
- Syrian man found dead near Polish border with Belarus
- Poland set to spend over $400m on construction of Trump-like wall over Belarus border
Migrants from the Middle East and Africa had not previously used this migration route to the wealthy European bloc.
Polish border guards have reported 5,100 attempted irregular crossings from Belarus so far in November, compared to 120 in all of 2020. Comparative numbers also spiked in the two Baltic states.
“Today we are going to approve a new package of sanctions,” said the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, adding they will target airlines and travel agencies involved in “this illegal push of migrants”.
The Belarusian foreign ministry replied by dismissing as “absurd” accusations that Minsk had engineered the migrant crisis on its borders with the European Union, according to Russian state news agency RIA.
Lukashenko said Belarus was trying to convince migrants to go back home. “But nobody wants to go back,” he said, according to Belarus’ state news agency Belta. Minsk would retaliate against any new EU sanctions, he was quoted as saying.
