Debate: The escalating humanitarian crisis on the EU-Belarusian border, in particular in Poland
Date: WEDNESDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2021
Speaker: Josep Borrell Fontelles
Language: EN

Everybody has seen the images of groups of people – let’s call them migrants – escorted by armed Belarusian security forces towards the borders of the European Union Member States, with the aim to force irregular entries. These images are certainly shocking, and the situation can become worse and the images can be still more shocking.  It’s clear that the Belarusian authorities are using human beings as a tool for political purposes. They have given them false expectations and put them in a situation of extreme vulnerability.  This summer, it started from Iraq. Iraqi people, mainly coming from Kurdistan, were told that the doors of Europe were open at the Belarusian border and transported from Baghdad to Minsk and from Minsk to the borders with Poland and Lithuania.  I personally intervened with the Foreign Affairs Minister of Iraq, explaining what was happening and the risk that their people were facing, and I have to recognise that the Iraqi authorities answered correctly, suspending the flights from Baghdad to Minsk.  At the end of the summer, the situation looked under control. But in October, things began again at a larger scale, because even if the Iraqi airways were still not flying, some of the small private companies were flying from Baghdad and suddenly from many other airports in the Middle East. Many other parts of the Middle East have been used as hubs to send people from Syria, from Iraq or Afghanistan to Belarus and from there to the European borders.  We have been engaged in diplomatic outreach, alerting the countries of origin and transit about the situation, and asking them for cooperation in stopping this flow. To date, the External Action Service has been outreaching with 13 partner countries. As I said, I personally discussed this issue with the Iraqi authorities and they took concrete measures, suspending direct flights and closing two honorary Belarusian consulates in the country. But now, our outreach has to be much more extended because it is not point—to-point travel with a single or a couple of actors, it’s a whole network of destinations with transit countries, involving a lot of airlines and a lot of people. We continue our diplomatic outreach. The Vice-President of the Commission, Mr Schinas, will personally – because I cannot go, I cannot afford to travel to all these places just coming from Latin America and this weekend we have the Paris Peace Forum – but President von der Leyen has charged Commissioner Schinas to go to Abu Dhabi, to Beirut, to Baghdad and Erbil in the coming days. There are many other places. And later also to Ankara to specifically discuss this crisis, which is putting the European Union’s borders under pressure and at a cost of human suffering and human lives.  We are also monitoring potential new routes and possible new flight connections, as well as developments in more than 20 countries where our delegations are asked to report. I also asked our delegations to embark on wide efforts of giving information to the people, explaining to the people in these countries that the promises of free entry to Europe are fake; that they are being cheated, they’re being robbed, they’re being asked to pay USD 6 000-7 000 for a journey that goes nowhere.  Well the first thing to do is to try to inform these people, these potential victims of the smugglers, to tell them the truth. Don’t go. Don’t believe these people. Don’t spend your money. Don’t put your lives at risk. Don’t do that. Our delegations will do whatever they can in order to widely spread this information.  But so many people are so desperate that maybe they don’t care and they are ready to take the risk. But our responsibility is to try to inform them as much as we can. Also, our delegation in Minsk, because we still have one, will get in touch with the Belarusian authorities, although I suppose there is nothing to explain to them because they know perfectly what they are doing.  What are they doing? They are using migrants as an instrument, accompanied by a widespread disinformation campaign to put pressure on our borders and create a humanitarian crisis. We are monitoring these information narratives, exposing and debunking them. We do whatever we can in order to inform them what it is about.  In Iraq it worked, but now people are flying from airports very close to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Now they take these people from Jordan and Lebanon and a lot of charter flights are bringing these people to Minsk.  To address this situation, we have to see what is the scope of the existing sanctions regime on Belarus and to expand it. We are studying how to expand it in order to adopt a new package of sanctions – it will be the fifth one – which will include those responsible for contributing to the ongoing crisis at our external borders. The European Council meeting in October gave us a clear mandate in this regard. Foreign Affairs Ministers will deal with this issue next Monday.  I want to say also that this crisis should not distract our attention from what’s behind the current escalation at the European Union border. The Lukashenko regime is a regime that is oppressing its own people, disregarding their fundamental freedoms and perpetrating human rights violations, systematically silencing all remaining independent voices in the country, free media, human rights defenders and civil society at large. Since last August, more than 35 000 people have been arrested. We know of 830 political prisoners, and more than 270 NGOs have been dissolved. Representatives of the opposition and journalists have been sentenced to long prison sentences in closed trials.  We must continue to be very active in this respect because the problem is the Lukashenko regime. This is the problem and we have to go to the root of the problem: a regime that lacks any kind of respect for human dignity and human life. We have to promote an international accountability mechanism. We are thinking of mobilising the United Nations Framework to face this new crisis created by the Lukashenko regime.  On the other hand, this is a humanitarian crisis and it has to be dealt with as it is. And I am sorry to say that today, the organisations that deal with humanitarian crises cannot reach these people from either side of the border: not from the EU side nor from the Belarusian side. Certainly, these people are on the Belarusian side, and the first one to allow free passage is the Belarusian regime, which until now has been impossible.  I’ve just been talking with Filippo Grandi. I agree with him that the situation is completely unacceptable because, you know, it’s winter, and you can imagine what can happen if thousands of people have to stay during low temperatures in the fields. No water, no food, no heating. It doesn’t happen thousands of kilometres away from us. It’s happening just on the other side of our border.  So the first thing that we have to do is to get from the Belarusian Government an organisation that can provide humanitarian help, that can reach these people – to avoid images that can provoke big trouble among us.  The second thing is to open a humanitarian corridor for these people coming back. They cannot cross the European Union border by forcing the borders, but they cannot stay there forever. They need humanitarian help. They need a way out of the situation in which Belarusians have put them, because they were perfectly aware of what they were doing. Come, take a plane, I will bring you to the border. I will push you through the border and I will not let you go back. And they start shooting in the air in order to prevent these people going backwards.  So a humanitarian corridor has to be opened in order to put these people back, and we have to get agreements with the origin countries in order for a safe return.  But that is the migration part of the problem. What bothers all of us is first the humanitarian situation of these people, and second the grave geopolitical situation in which we are embarking in our relationship with the Lukashenko regime. It is clear that it is an answer to our sanctions. You sanction me, I will create trouble for you. If I have to put people at risk to create this trouble, I will do so. And this is something completely unacceptable, and we have to mobilise all our resources in order to face this situation from any point of view – a humanitarian, geopolitical and migration point of view.  I have reports from intelligence about the situation there. It has become worse and worse since the end of October. Istanbul remains one of the main transit hubs for the migrants, and from Dubai, from Damascus, from Jordan, from Lebanon, planes, big planes – at the beginning they were small charters – then after they were big planes with 400 people on board. And these people explain their story. I’ve been proposed a nice holiday in Belarus by travel agencies, and I will be provided with a way to go to Europe. It costs USD 6 000-7 000, but I want to take the chance. Nobody told them what was their real destination. So this is a severe crisis. It’s not a war, but it’s an attack. It’s a weaponisation of human beings, of the weakest human beings. The desperation of people looking for a better life makes some inhuman dictator use them as arms that can be thrown against a wall.  And I am happy to have the opportunity to talk with the European  Parliament today in order to make you aware of what’s happening. We have to do whatever we can in order to provide humanitarian assistance to these people.  I hope that Filippo Grandi will be able to push the Belarusian Government. We will do so as well. And then we have to look for a way out and then we have to continue fighting with a regime that is able to indulge in this kind of inhuman behaviour.