Europe’s policies enable Belarus border gambit

The humanitarian crisis continues at the borders between Belarus and Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.

Belarus’s government triggered the situation, as retaliation for EU sanctions over President Lukashenka’s authoritarian crackdown. Belarus has cruelly duped desperate people — mainly from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, including many persecuted Yazidis and Kurds — by selling them flights to Minsk and visas that it falsely said would get them legally into the EU.

On arrival, they find they can only cross irregularly, through dense, dangerous forest in increasingly harsh weather. Border guards and troops in the EU states assault, abuse and push them back to their Belarussian counterparts, who do likewise. Trapped in between, they are treated variously as pawns or bogeymen in Lukashenka’s attempted diplomatic blackmail, the EU’s extreme racist hostility to immigration, and the Polish government’s efforts to shore up support with nationalistic fervour (see Igor Wenc’s report below).

Poland, Latvia and Lithuania all declared states of emergency. Latvia and Lithuania authorised border guards to use physical violence and restricted the ability to submit asylum applications in border regions; and Poland banned press and humanitarian NGOs from a “red zone” adjacent to the border.

Poland and Latvia have both approved construction of border walls. There is growing pressure within the EU to abandon its policy not to help fund construction of such barriers.

The “pushback” of refugees thwarts the right to apply for asylum, breaching EU and international law. But such violations are increasingly normalised among European states.

The EU leadership has expressed “solidarity” with the three states. Von der Leyen’s Commission proposes allowing them to breach EU standards on asylum rights, detaining refugees for longer in even worse conditions.

Europe-wide, the left and labour movement must do much more to link up and confront xenophobic politics both inside and outside parliamentary channels, on both a national and EU-wide level. This also requires challenging and driving back pro-border-control elements within the left (from France’s Mélenchon to Britain’s Morning Star) and centre-left (e.g. Denmark’s racist Social Democrat government and UK Labour’s Starmer leadership).

Does the situation vindicate those who justified backing Brexit by citing Fortress Europe? From outside the EU, the UK still sent troops to help fortify Poland’s border. But even a left government in Britain would be in a weaker position to intervene positively. We gained nothing from Brexit except the possibility of a meaningless claim to avoid “complicity”, and have lost the ability to augment grassroots action with direct challenges to Fortress Europe policies, in concert with allies, in the EU’s democratic arena – the parliament, elections etc.

Politicians in the border states, EU and UK justify their policies with increasingly frenzied rhetoric. They frame the migrants as a “security crisis” and Lukashenka’s gambit as “hybrid war”. That ten thousand refugees could “destabilise” the EU is absurd: wealthy European countries could easily afford a generous welcome to many more, and barely notice.

It is right to denounce Minsk’s violence and its abuse of migrants for diplomatic blackmail (not military manoeuvre). But such a gambit is only possible because of the EU’s ferocious hostility to immigration.

European policies like the Khartoum Process pay authoritarians, human rights abusers and genocidaires to prevent migrants reaching the walls of Fortress Europe.

EU cash has ended up in the hands of militias and businesses in Libya that capture would-be migrants, torture, extort, and sell them to traffickers. It has bolstered the genocidal former Janjaweed paramilitaries now policing Sudan’s border.

The EU trained and equipped Lukashenka’s forces to police the border. And Lukashenka is not the first to use this position for attempted blackmail. Turkey’s Erdogan successfully extracted millions in funding by threatening to open the gates. Morocco has used similar tactics to press Spain to accept its claim over Western Sahara.

The EU’s and its member states’ diplomatic “solutions” to Lukashenka’s provocation include further externalisation of border control. They induced Turkey and UAE to ban Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni nationals from boarding flights to Minsk, and Iraq to halt such flights. Blocking flights will probably impel people back towards the even riskier Mediterranean crossing routes.

EU governments could stop the humanitarian crisis and Lukashenka’s gambit overnight: simply open the borders, provide safe routes, and welcome new arrivals.