Belarus migrants: EU accuses Lukashenko of gangster-styled abuse on migrants

The European Commission has accused Belarus’s authoritarian leader of luring migrants with the false promise of easy entry into the EU as part of an “inhuman, gangster-style approach”.

At least 2,000 migrants are now on the border with Belarus.

“Upon arrival, they are pushed to the border and forced to make an illegal entry into the European Union,” said Commission spokesman Peter Stano.

Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko has denied any wrongdoing.

EU and NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have all seen a surge in the number of people trying to enter their countries illegally from Belarus in recent months. Many are young men but they include women and children, mainly from the Middle East and Asia.

Poland saw the most arrivals, especially around its large border crossing at Kuznica.

Migrants described how Belarusian authorities seized their phones and pushed them to the border. Overnight temperatures at the border have dropped below zero and some people have already died in recent weeks.

“Nobody lets us in anywhere, Belarus or Poland,” 33-year-old Shwan Kurd from Iraq told the BBC via video call.

He described how he arrived in Minsk from Baghdad in early November, and was now in a make-shift camp meter of the Polish barbed wire fence.

“There is no way to escape,” he said. “Poland does not let us in. Every night they fly helicopters. They do not let us sleep. We are so hungry. There is no water and no food here. There are small children, old men and women and families.”