Brussels is shirking its legal obligations in order to prevent internal tensions with populist opposition to capitalist corporate-controlled Europe.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has made a stark accusation versus Belarus and Russia, claiming they are weaponizing the migration problem on the border with Poland. This is an afraid relocate to divert blame. It is likewise recklessly escalating conflict.
Talking to media after a White Home meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, the top European Union official stated the task at hand had to do with” protecting our democracies “from”negative hybrid warfare”. She explicitly accused Belarus of weaponizing migration and destabilizing the EU.
Von der Leyen did not mention Russia by name but her comments suggested Moscow was conspiring with its next-door neighbor and ally to develop geopolitical stress by helping with an influx of migrants into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. She likewise pointed out unproven previous accusations of election interference and cyberattacks attributed to Russia as precedents for the current “hybrid warfare” with migration.
Other EU leaders have been more openly intriguing. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki today claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “masterminding” a plot in cahoots with Belarus to flood the EU with migrants. This is a rehash of an old claim dating back to 2015 when more than one million refugees entered the EU. That mass movement was declared then to be “hybrid warfare” orchestrated by Putin to create chaos in the bloc.
Such a claim is based on illogical Russophobia that does not stand with truths, then or now.
Most of the refugees stranded at the Belarus borders with Poland and the Baltic states are from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. This was the exact same as in 2015. The common denominator is that these 3 source nations have actually been subjected to war and hostility by the United States and its European NATO allies over twenty years. That is the root of the incredible migration to Europe. One can also factor in the NATO damage of Libya in 2011 as another entrance for mass migration.
The EU is weaponizing the concern by misshaping the cause: declaring that it is Russia and Belarus creating the human tide when in fact it has been unlawful imperialist wars and regime-change operations performed by the United States and the Europeans.
It is Poland and EU members that are deploying countless troops, tanks and barbed wire along the border with Belarus. This is an abomination of expected “European worths” and regard for international laws of asylum. The fiasco of Brussels economically supporting the building and construction of barbed wire fences is an international disgrace. Pointedly, this rush to ring-fence Europe comes exactly 32 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Filippo Grandi, the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, this week condemned the EU’s xenophobic, militarized response to people looking for asylum.
The heavy-handed EU reaction is way out of proportion to the real numbers involved. It is estimated that some 8,000 individuals have actually crossed over the Belarusian border into the European Union this year.
In 2015, the increase of an estimated one million refugees into Europe from U.S.-led wars in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia provoked an existential political crisis for the European Union. Eastern European member states like Poland and Hungary declined to share quotas for resettling asylum candidates. Germany took on an out of proportion share under Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open door” policy. That policy had huge unfavorable consequences for the whole bloc.
It caused bitter tensions between member states and within states. The increase of populist anti-EU political parties was mostly driven by a perception of foreign migrants flooding societies.
The EU frantically wants to prevent a repetition of that internal political crisis. Thus it is moving quickly to make Poland and the Baltic states the “line of defense”. This describes the abrupt militarization of border controls with Belarus.
The EU is preparing another round of economic sanctions versus Belarus next week, implicating its President Alexander Lukashenko of “gangsterism” and “human trafficking”. The possible imposition of sanctions on Russian airline companies is also being mulled on the back of allegations that Moscow is conspiring with Minsk in pushing migrants towards the EU. This is a negligent escalation of tensions.
Russia has flatly turned down any such claims. Moscow states the EU requires to talk directly with Minsk to solve the issue. One concept proposed by the Kremlin is for Brussels to supply financial aid to Belarus to carry out a logical system of asylum application and resettlement. But the suspicion is that is the last thing the EU wants to do. It merely wishes to obstruct any migration to prevent internal political strife. To do that, it needs to blockade Belarus. That blockade is having a negative influence on the economy of Belarus from typical border crossings for trade and haulage being stymied.
The underlying problem also returns partly to the EU’s hostile policy towards Belarus. Brussels has actually controversially interfered in Belarus, in addition to the United States, in claiming that its presidential election in 2015 was a sham. The EU declines to recognize the re-election of Lukashenko and has actually slapped numerous rounds of sanctions on the nation while declaring that a banished opposition prospect is the real winner.
The Belarus government states it can’t afford to accommodate refugees coming through its territory en path to their wanted location of the European Union. Offered the background hostility of the EU towards Belarus, it is easy to understand if Minsk is not exactly supervising border controls. It’s a kind of “screw you” gesture to the European bloc for its disturbance in Belarus’ political affairs. Von der Leyen and other authorities are going further by claiming that Minsk is deliberately arranging flights of refugees from different Middle Eastern nations, including Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates.
Under worldwide law, the EU is required to receive asylum candidates. The European governments have actually created countless displaced individuals from their criminal wars and machinations in addition to the United States. However Brussels is shirking its legal responsibilities in order to prevent internal tensions with member states over immigration and populist opposition to capitalist corporate-controlled Europe. However by weaponizing the matter, the EU is recklessly winding up tensions with Belarus and Russia. The perpetrator is Europe’s ethical and political cowardice to measure up to its duties by seeking to shift the blame on to others.