How A Dictator Engineered A Migration Crisis At The Belarus-Poland Border
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
How did they get there? They were invited — and in some cases, their travel facilitated — by the regime of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. EU leaders say Lukashenko and his backers in Russia are 'weaponizing' migration in retaliation for sanctions placed on Belarus last year. Those sanctions came after the EU accused Lukashenko of rigging his most recent election.
Now, many hundreds of migrants are stuck on the Belarus side of the border. There have been at least nine recorded deaths, but observers think there have been many more. Migrants were reportedly moved from makeshift camps outdoors to a government-run shelter on Thursday, though it's unclear what Belarus plans to do with them next.
NPR international correspondent Rob Schmitz has seen the crisis up close. This episode is a collection of his reporting. Find more of it here, and see photos from the border on NPR's Picture Show.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What you're about to hear was recorded about a month ago in the Polish town of Sakułka on the country's eastern border with Belarus |
| 0:10.1 | That is where I appear international correspondent Rob Schmidt met two men both migrants who said they had barely had anything to eat for 10 days |
| 0:21.5 | One of the men Daniel Machado Pugiel said they had been drinking water from a river eating raw corn from nearby fields |
| 0:29.1 | They were starving and you'll notice |
| 0:32.2 | He was speaking to Rob Schmidt's in Spanish |
| 0:43.9 | The men were from Cuba they got to Belarus after flying to Moscow and in recent months thousands of other migrants from far away |
| 0:51.8 | Countries have wound up there too some of them are Iraqi some of them are Kurds |
| 0:56.0 | There are people from Yemen from Syria |
| 1:01.0 | There are people from African countries like Nigeria |
| 1:04.6 | Cameroon and from Cuba as we just heard that is Kalina Zwanag she works for the humanitarian organization |
| 1:12.2 | Fundacia osalania so why were migrants from as far away as Cuba starving in the forests of Belarus? |
| 1:19.1 | They are inviting them |
| 1:21.1 | to Belarus saying that they can cross EU border from there |
| 1:27.2 | That's right the Belarusian government led by dictator Alexander Lukashenko is accused of inviting migrants to his country |
| 1:35.6 | Helping arrange flights and encouraging them even forcing them to illegally cross the border into Poland and into the European Union |
| 1:43.8 | 12,000 Polish troops have been deployed along the razor wire fence of the border |
| 1:47.5 | Poland though bound by EU law to process migrants seeking asylum |
| 1:52.4 | Refused to do so and Belarus has refused to take them back |
| 1:55.7 | The European Commission president accused Belarus of state-sponsored people smuggling now |
| 2:01.0 | Belarus has reportedly moved many hundreds of migrants out of their makeshift camps on the border to a government shelter nearby where their fate is uncertain |
| 2:09.8 | They appear still to be under the control of the country's security forces |
| 2:13.4 | But mandol was in Rio, Machado Puyol said last month they had been beaten, refused food and water |
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