The EU Double Standard on Refugees with Belarus

Nov. 12, 2021 (EIRNS)—In the current confrontation with Belarus, the European Union is hypocritically backing Poland’s actions to seal its borders to refugees, while at the same time has imposed upon Italy the requirement to indiscriminately receive daily NGO ships with sometimes more than 1,000 refugees on board. The “open border” dogma imposed on Italy does not work, apparently, when the refugee issue can be used as a geopolitical weapon against a supposed “Putin crony” such as Belarus.

In the second phone call with Vladimir Putin in two days yesterday, Angela Merkel raised allegations against Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. “The chancellor said that the Belarusian regime was the cause of it, because it was using defenseless people in a hybrid attack against the European Union,” German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told journalists. On Nov. 15, EU foreign ministers will discuss new sanctions against Belarus and against airlines that allegedly aid bringing refugees to Belarus to be smuggled into the EU. Those companies include Aeroflot.

Yesterday, the U.S., the U.K. and European countries in the UN Security Council (France, Norway, Estonia, Albania and Ireland) issued a joint statement after a closed-door meeting of the Security Council, saying they are ready to issue new sanctions against Belarus, accused of using illegal migrants against Poland and the EU. “Together, we express our solidarity with Poland and Lithuania and stand ready to discuss further measures that we can take to support them and target those involved in and contributing to activities by the Lukashenko regime that facilitate the illegal crossing of the external borders of the European Union,” the statement says.

The countries claimed they want to protect the EU “against these hybrid operations by Belarusian authorities” and that “the Lukashenko regime has become a threat to regional stability.” The statement saw Minsk’s so-called tactic as “unacceptable,” and stating that it “calls for a strong international reaction and cooperation in order to hold Belarus accountable.” The countries claim that Minsk’s goal is “destabilizing neighboring countries and the European Union’s external border and diverting attention away from its own increasing human rights violations.”

The full statement is posted by signers’ foreign ministries.