Border guards continue to detain migrants crossing the border of Lithuania illegally from the Belarusian side. But the Lithuanians say that the Belarusian border guards do not contribute to this.
On July 26 and the morning of July 27, Lithuanian border guards detained another 110 people who had illegally crossed the border from the Belarusian side. As many as 93 of them introduced themselves as Iraqi citizens or had the relevant documents.
In July alone, Lithuanians detained 2,180 migrants on the Belarusian border, and 2,839 since the beginning of the year, 35 times more than in the entire year 2020.
“The situation repeats itself, with Lithuanian border guards stopping the passage of migrants into the country, sitting for hours straight near the borderline on the Belarusian side and waiting,” the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service writes. “Even after numerous reports, received from Lithuania, the country’s officials do not “see” and do not respond to such migrants.”
According to the service, one of the cases was as follows. Around 2:30 a.m. on July 27, border guards from Švenčionys (Święceniai) noticed three men and a woman who approached the border from the Belarusian side, and when they saw the border guards, they just sat down on the ground and waited. The Lithuanians reported potential violators to the Belarusian side, but there was no reaction even after the sixth such report. Until 6:00 am, the potential intruders were backing up and approaching the border.
Such cases, according to the Lithuanian side, are constantly recorded.
Barbed wire does not stop but detains migrants
Lithuania has strengthened border protection and even installed barbed wire in sections of a total length of 5 km and plans to install it for another 20 km.
However, Delfi writes, three cases have already been recorded when migrants jumped over the barbed wire. While they were climbing over, border guards arrived and detained the intruders. They said they were citizens of Cameroon, Congo, and Guinea, but they had no documents. A week ago and two weeks ago, there were similar incidents with five Iraqis and four Nigerians, respectively.
