The European Union has territories outside the law, where police, military and irregular “commandos” beat up, illegally deport, keep in secret prisons and even torture immigrants and potential refugees.
A report from the human rights NGO International Amnesty reports serious human rights violations in Latvia to prevent the entry of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, who are used by the Belarusian regime to pressure the borders of neighboring countries that are member states of the European Union.
The arrival of immigrants and possible refugees from the Middle East almost to the Baltic is part of the hybrid war that the Russian regime and its vassal State, the Belarusian, are carrying out against the European Union and NATO, but the response of the Latvian authorities constitutes, according to the report and the testimonies collected by its investigators, the creation of a space of non-law where violence is imposed without control and the most basic human rights are violated with impunity.
The director of Amnesty International’s office before the European institutions, Eve Geddie, assures that “Latvia gives refugees and migrants a cruel ultimatum: accept ‘voluntary’ deportation to their countries or be kept in detention centers at the border, illegally deported to Belarus and tortured. In some cases, arbitrary detention at the border is equivalent to an enforced disappearance.”
View of migrants at the border with Belarus.
RAMIL NASIBULIN / EFE
This expert in the defense of human rights assures that “the Latvian authorities have left men, women and children abandoned in border forests in sub-zero temperatures, blocked in forests or under campaign huts”. She also recounts that “they are violently pushed back to Belarus, where they have no chance of obtaining protection. These actions have nothing to do with border protection and are flagrant violations of international and European law.”
One of the most serious complaints is that of the existence of secret detention centers where migrants are tortured who refuse to be deported ‘voluntarily’ to their countries of origin. Amnesty International’s report says that “many are beaten or electrocuted with tasers, including on their genitals.”
Latvia has carried out those policies since at least August 2021. Then the Latvian government declared a state of emergency, when Belarus began busing Middle Eastern migrants to the Polish border and to a lesser extent to the Latvian and Lithuanian borders.
they strip us naked, sometimes they beat us when we are naked and force us to go back to Belarus
Poland responded by erecting fences and gates at full speed and Lithuania by locking up crossers in refugee camps controlled by the Police and the Armed Forces while also building fences. But in neither of the two cases were there complaints as serious as the existence of secret prisons.
The state of emergency in Latvia suspended the European asylum directive and allowed migrants and potential refugees to be deported and detained without judicial control. Despite the fact that the migratory pressure is much less, the Latvian authorities have continued to extend this state of emergency until now. The few migrants who managed to enter Latvia were locked up without the possibility of requesting asylum, another violation of European regulations and international conventions.
The report assures that in addition to the border guards, in Latvia police personnel, the Armed Forces and “commandos”, unidentified but armed people and with the consent of the authorities, act against migrants.
Amnesty International researchers collected testimonies at the border. A young Iraqi man identified as Hassan told them that “they strip us naked, sometimes they beat us when we are naked and they force us to go back to Belarus, sometimes crossing a river. They tell us that if we don’t cross they will shoot us.”
Adil, another Iraqi, has been in the forest since August 2021. He is pushed back to the border by Latvian guards and when he reaches Belarus he is returned, like a tennis ball, by Belarusian guards. Meanwhile, more than a year has passed, with last winter suffering temperatures as low as -20 degrees, surviving in the forest. A forest, says the report, where there are bears and wolves.
A Latvian human rights NGO that collaborated with Amnesty International assures that they could have disappeared because more than 30 families of migrants and refugees had contacted them from Middle Eastern countries, assuring that for months they had not heard from relatives who had told them that they had arrived. to Latvia.
The Latvian authorities assure that some of these migrants agree to return to their countries of origin ‘voluntarily’. Amnesty International’s report denounces that representatives in Latvia of the International Organization for Migration ignored evidence showing that people who had supposedly returned to their countries “voluntarily” had actually been deported against their will without being able to apply for asylum. .
Geddie considers that “Latvia’s shameful treatment of people arriving at its borders presents a vital test for the European institutions, which must take urgent action to ensure that Latvia ends the state of emergency and restores the right to asylum without take into account the origin of those who cross the border. The antecedents suggest that the European Commission will decide between pretending to do something and doing nothing.
IDAFE MARTIN PEREZ
FOR THE TIME
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