EU diplomats ignore Minsk conference on illegal migration

November 15, Pozirk. A conference on illegal migration is taking place in Minsk despite European Union countries’ refusal to send their representatives.

Alaksandar Valfovič, state secretary of Belarus’ Security Council, seized the opportunity to accuse Western countries of unwillingness to tackle the issue.

“We need to sit down at the negotiating table, talk to each other, develop constructive joint steps and establish closer cooperation to find ways to resolve the issue,” state-run media outlets quoted him as saying. “We have repeatedly offered discussions and search for solutions via the foreign ministry and other channels.”

Officials in the EU countries that border Belarus refer to the migration crisis a “hybrid attack” orchestrated by Minsk and Moscow.

Valfovič claimed that Belarusian law enforcers broke up 60 human trafficking rings last year, arresting more than 170 suspects.

“We are not interested in building fences at our border or harassing migrants, humiliating, beating and killing them,” he stressed. “Over the past year, we have recorded 50 deaths of migrants who were dropped off in Belarus.”

Belarus’ EU neighbors make no attempts to establish communication with Minsk to counteract illegal migration, First Deputy Interior Minister Juryj Nazaranka said in his address.

“If the EU doesn’t want to work with us, the solution is obvious: [it should] go to these countries, from which these people flee and work with them,” Foreign Minister Maksim Ryžankoŭ noted. “If the EU sorts out everything with these countries, no one will go to Belarus. But if the EU needs it here—at a much lower cost than building a wall across the East—it should talk to us.”

The migration crisis at the Belarusian-EU border started in spring 2021 after Alaksandar Łukašenka, angered by EU sanctions, had indicated that Minsk would not prevent migrants from Africa and Asia from using Belarus as a route to the EU. It escalated in November 2021, with hundreds of migrants storming the Polish border.

Since the start of 2024, the EU has not allowed at least 34,782 foreigners to enter illegally from Belarus, with 28,668 attempts via Poland, 5,200 via Latvia and 914 via Lithuania, according to Pozirk‘s analysis of border guards’ data.

A few months ago, Łukašenka reiterated that he would not help the EU combat illegal migration. “I do not intend to give orders to border guards, military and others to defend the EU,” he said. “You tied a noose around our neck, and yet you are forcing us to defend you from these poor people,” he said in a reference to international sanctions.

The Belarusian ruler claimed that the bloc terminated the readmission treaty, but in fact it was Minsk that terminated it in June 2021.

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