Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned that over 2,500 asylum seekers and migrants are being detained in "inhumane" conditions in Lithuania after they crossed the border from Belarus. The NGO said many are at risk of mental health degradation.
A video received by InfoMigrants shows a dozen women in Lithuania's Medininkai camp partially undressed, obviously frightened and with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. Witnesses say that Lithuanian guards arrested these migrants in their rooms, without giving them time to dress. Lithuanian authorities denied any knowledge of what had happened.
InfoMigrants contacted Eric*, an African migrant who has been locked up inside the Pabradé migrant camp in Lithuania for several months. He said he is under permanent pressure from the Lithuanian military in the camp, who harass the migrants to "go home".
The Lithuanian authorities have reportedly paid 272 migrants €1,000 to return home. According to the Polish satellite channel Belsat, the group will leave Lithuania next week on commercial flights.
In the summer of 2021, thousands of migrants entered Lithuania irregularly from Belarus. They found themselves blocked at the border of the European Union and taken to closed camps. InfoMigrants met several of these migrants, from the Middle East and Africa, who dreamed of reaching Western Europe. Six months later, what has happened to them?
Many migrants who have arrived from neighboring Belarus are currently stuck in the Pabradé camp in Lithuania that many have compared to a prison. Sekou, an asylum seeker from Guinea, has been there for seven months. He says the living conditions are deplorable and that the asylum interviews are a "charade" with an automatically negative outcome.
Lithuania plans to install surveillance cameras along the entire length of its border with Belarus, the prime minister said on Friday. The announcement came only a few days after Poland began building a permanent wall to prevent migrants and refugees from entering the EU.
European Union interior ministers discussed border security and asylum at a meeting in Lithuania. The EU home affairs commissioner urged preemptive action outside the bloc and condemned the policy of pushbacks.
The Lithuanian interior minister says migrant arrivals from Belarus have stopped, while the foreign minister visited Iraqi officials to discuss the repatriation of Iraqi nationals stranded at the Belarus-Lithuania border.
European Union and UNHCR officials have announced that Latvia, Lithuania and Poland still use "pushbacks and other violations of human rights" at the borders to keep migrants out. They added that they are also denying access to aid groups trying to help people in the border region with Belarus.
The Lithuanian government has decided not to extend a state of emergency along its border with Belarus. The EU country had declared the state of emergency in August to curb the flow of migrants trying to enter the country irregularly.
The Lithuanian government says it flew 98 people back to Iraq over the weekend. It was the first chartered flight to return migrants who had entered from Belarus.