Belavia to stop admitting Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis on flights from Turkey
Belarusian state airline Belavia announced Friday that it will stop accepting citizens from Iraq, Syria and Yemen on flights from Turkey to Belarus, closing one of the routes used by migrants to reach Minsk and from there to the border with the European Union (EU).
"By virtue of the decision of the competent authorities of Turkey, as of today citizens of Iraq, Syria and Yemen will not be admitted on flights between Turkey and Belarus," the company said in a brief statement on its corporate website.
The move comes amid the migrant crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, where some 2,000 migrants from the Middle East, particularly those three countries, have been gathering since Monday to try to cross into the EU.
The EU is preparing new sanctions against Belarus for the "hybrid war" it is waging by transporting migrants to the EU border in order to destabilise the EU.
Work in Brussels includes exploring not only new restrictive measures against Belarus, but also against third-country airlines "actively involved in people smuggling".
Both Turkey, with its flag carrier Turkish Airlines, and Russia, led by Aeroflot, have denied any involvement in transporting undocumented migrants to Belarus.
Turkish Airlines operates ten flights a week to Minsk, a similar number to Belavia.
The Belarusian state airline denied in late October that it was carrying irregular migrants to the EU, while the government of Alexander Lukashenko has said that they enter Belarus legally, with visas that activists say are arranged from Minsk.
Belarusian lawyer Aliona Chekhovich, an immigration expert, told EFE on Wednesday that it was the Belarusian regime that organised the flow of irregular migrants to the EU in recent months.
"The authorities were the ones who launched an advertising campaign several months ago in which Belarus appeared as a transit country to the EU", she commented from Minsk.
According to Chekhovich, this campaign would involve and benefit tourist agencies and tour operators that report to the presidential administration.
The activist spoke to several migrants who tried unsuccessfully to cross the EU border in the last two weeks.
"Most of them are Kurds from Iraq, but there are also Syrians and Iranians. They told us that they paid, were granted tourist visas, booked a hotel room or a flat in Minsk, and tried to cross into Europe through the forest," she said.
Since last spring, attempts to illegally enter Latvia, Lithuania and Poland from Belarus have multiplied.
This comes after Lukashenko went so far as to openly declare that he will stop preventing undocumented migrants from entering the EU in response to Western sanctions imposed over the fraudulent 2020 presidential election, the subsequent crackdown and the forced landing of a European flight in May to detain a dissident.
