BAGHDAD — Iraq’s foreign minister said Thursday his government would investigate trafficking networks responsible for smuggling hundreds of Iraqis into Europe, specifically via Belarus to Lithuania.
Foreign
Minister Fuad Hussein made the promise after a meeting in Baghdad with his
visiting Lithuanian counterpart, Gabrielius Landsbergis. Lithuania, which
recently declared a state of emergency due to the rising influx of migrants,
had appealed on Iraq to act in the matter.
Hussein
said Iraq will form a committee with representatives from the Foreign Ministry,
Migration Ministry, as well as intelligence and the Civil Aviation Authority to
clamp down on the smuggling networks. He spoke to reporters in a joint press
conference with Landsbergis.
Landsbergis
said there was a “mutual need” to disrupt the network from Iraq into Europe
that was being perpetrated by “malign actors” using criminal elements. He
blamed neighboring Belarus for encouraging migration into Lithuania.
In the
past two months, more than 1,500 people have crossed into Lithuania — 20 times
more than in the whole of 2020. In response, Vilnius declared a state of
emergency and accused Belarus of organizing border crossings by people, mainly
from Iraq.
“An
unfriendly country to us, our neighbor, is using migrants, mostly Iraqi people,
to pressure my country, to pressure the European Union in order for us to
change our policy,” Landsbergis said.
“We feel
Iraqi people are becoming a victim of the Belarusian regime,” he said.
Landsbergis added that he had recounted to Hussein some of the testimony
collected by Lithuanian authorities from 800 Iraqi migrants about how they were
trafficked into Lithuania.
“Iraqi
people are being promised an easy trip to Europe, a European paradise of sorts,
but the problem is, they end up in a Lithuanian forest in a refugee camp,” he
said. “We think those people were lied to, they had to pay a lot of a money to
get to the border.”
Relations
between Lithuania and Belarus soured after the August 2020 elections in Minsk,
which was won by long-time President Alexander Lukashenko but has been
condemned by the West as rigged. The vote results triggered months of protests
and a harsh crackdown on the opposition by Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime.
Hussein
said the committee would investigate the issue inside Iraq and take action
based on its results.
Migrants
in Verebiejai, Lithuania, told The Associated Press earlier this week that they
came to Minsk from Baghdad.
“I gave
somebody $1,400 to bring me to the woods. I think it was the border. They
showed me the way. They told me: go this way. Then I walked,” an unnamed
migrant said.
Another
told the same story and added that he booked a hotel in Minsk and after that,
“started trying” to cross the border into Lithuania.
***Associated
Press writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/europe-middle-east-migration-iraq-smuggling-9618cc0107f8b0ed9de8d3e280803e66