Kyiv: President Belarus on Thursday ordered the state security forces to tighten control over the border with Lithuania, which earlier this week began to turn immigrants who tried to cross from Belarus.
Lithuania, a member of the European Union, has faced a surge in most Iraqi migrants in recent months.
It was said that it was due to retaliation by Belarus’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko after the EU put his country’s sanctions for diverting the plane to the Minsk capital and arresting a dissident.
Iraqi waves and others emerge as a source of other tensions between autocratic Belarus and European neighbors in the West.
On Tuesday, Lithuania said it was entitled to use the power to stop illegal immigration like that and turned 180 people trying to enter the country.
Lukashenko on Thursday ordered a defense and security agent to “close every border meter” so as not to let Lithuanian immigrants return to Belarus.
“God forbade them began to implement policies to release those they invite there through the official border intersection point,” Lukashenko said during a meeting with defense and security officials.
“Starting today, not one person must set foot in the Belarus area of the adjacent side, both from the south or from the west,” he added.
The authorities in Belarus this week alleged that Iraqi immigrants were forcibly excluded from Lithuania to Belarus having injuries, including dog bites, and had to be hospitalized.
Belarus also claimed on Wednesday that “non-Slavic” died of injury in the border city but Lithuania rejected the report as a propaganda of a hostile regime.
The Defense Minister, Arvydas Anususkas, called a report “clear provocation.
Lithuania is under a hybrid attack and disseminates the information is a classic example of this process.” Lithuania, a state of less than 3 million people, does not have physical obstacles on the border of a length of 679 kilometers (420 miles) with Belarus.
Around 4,090 migrants, most of them from Iraq, have crossed this year from Belarus to Lithuania.
The Lithuanian Ministry of Home this week distributes video shots from helicopters who show large groups of immigrants escorted to the Lithuanian border by Belarusian border guards.
The Polish media reported that some migrants had also tried to enter members of the Polish European Union from Belarus, even on a lower scale.
The Belarusian Border Committee demanded on Thursday that Lithuania “continues to force migrants to enter without the Belarusian border permission” and report efforts to “aggressively removing eight migrants …
to the Belarusian region,” was thwarted by Belarusian border guards.
Belarus to close the border when Lithuania turned migrants
