France last month accused the family of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of being behind human trafficking, “cleverly organized” towards the EU through Turkey and Dubai, AFP reported. “This trafficking in human beings is organized by the Lukashenko family directly, with third countries, in any case with organized trade flights and networks,” said French Secretary of State for European Affairs Clement Bonn. He pointed out that the traffic takes place through Turkey and Dubai. Bonn added that the migrants had previously been transported from Iraq.
“This is unbearable trafficking that aims to weaken and divide the EU,” the French representative said during a Senate hearing in the French parliament.
“The trap that Lukashenko wants us to fall into, we have already experienced with Turkey, and it is to tell us: You do not want migrants, you are abusing them, you do not respect the great principles you claim,” Bonn said. “We must be impeccable, firm, but also humane in our response,” he recommended, referring in particular to Poland.
Warsaw is considering building a wall along the border with Belarus and imposed a state of emergency in the area from which Polish forces return migrants to Belarus. Lithuania has started building a wire fence on its border with Belarus.
Europeans suspect President Lukashenko of organizing the arrival of migrants by plane from the Middle East and Africa to Minsk before sending them to Lithuania, Latvia and Poland as a punitive measure for EU economic sanctions imposed on Minsk.
Twelve European countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – sent a letter to the EC on October 7th urging it to ask the EU for funding for these border facilities. “We will not solve the problem with barbed wire fences, nor with the return of migrants or an emergency law that does not allow the press to reach a large area just to check what is happening there,” Clement Bonn said today. He advocates European action on air connections, airports, countries or companies that allow migrants to arrive in Belarus and then head to European borders.
